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She was incompetent, 4-LOM reasoned. She should not be allowed to own things she would not care for. 4-LOM grew increasingly concerned for the Ankarres Sapphire: her most valuable jewel, and one that meant a great deal to many people. He calculated the likely time and place of the jewel’s theft, if it were to take place on this flight, then surreptitiously substituted a cheap synth-sapph with a tracking device embedded in it for the real jewel—moments before the theft took place. Two Corellian scoundrels did steal the “sapphire” exactly when 4-LOM calculated someone would, but the synth-sapph emitted an ultrasonic distress call that brought help—unwanted help—rushing to the Corellians.

Only then was the theft discovered. Dom Pricina never missed the Ankarres Sapphire till the captain of the Kuari Princess himself returned “it” to her. 4-LOM stood nearby, the real jewel suspended in a black pouch hung at his side. Dom Pricina recognized at once that the synth-sapph was a fake. She rushed to her room and discovered that the real jewel was missing. She sobbed and begged anyone who listened to help her find that jewel.

4-LOM reasoned that he should return the sapphire at once. He had, after all, stopped an unfortunate crime and thus successfully completed an entire program sequence of his own devising.

But other programs flooded into his brain: Dom Pricina was careless. Most humans were careless. They did not properly value or guard the wondrous things they could possess. Surely he should guard the sapphire a while longer. 4-LOM studied the sapphire whenever he found himself alone. Its facets intrigued him. They sparkled in the dimmest light. Once he touched the sapphire to his own forehead, but felt nothing unusual: it was a beautiful stone held against his metal faceplate, nothing more. It might cure sick humans, he reasoned, but he, a droid, could expect nothing from it.

Still, he did not return the jewel. It was never discovered. No one suspected 4-LOM of the theft. For months afterward, 4-LOM stole from the passengers he “served,” telling himself he had to help protect things of value. But he found the thefts exciting.

Thievery was a very human act, after all, and he suddenly understood its pleasures. Doing it required 4-LOM to create elegant, complicated programs that bypassed all his ethical—all his droid—programming. Little by little, 4-LOM reprogrammed himself to find crime exciting, to value the possession of things, to despise careless nonmechanical sentients. He soon grew bored with the now predictable options for crime aboard the Kuari Princess and jumped ship at Darlyn Boda. In that planet’s steamy, criminal underground, 4-LOM sold most of the jewels he had stolen, left the others on consignment, and began a life devoted entirely to crime and its excitement.

He was so successful, he calculated, that an alliance with Jabba the Hutt became inevitable. When the offer did come, 4-LOM quickly accepted. Jabba had him fitted with deadly combat weapons and the programs that ran them in return for 4-LOM’s services as a bounty hunter. Working with Zuckuss was the next logical step. From a careful study of Zuckuss, 4-LOM planned to learn the ways of intuition.

He carefully stored all visual and auditory input from and around Zuckuss in the moments just before and after he fired the decisive shot at the retreating Rebel transport—the moments of intuition. 4-LOM would study them, with all the other data on Zuckuss’s intuition he had collected from years of observation.

It was more raw data obtained in his quest for understanding. Understanding would come to him, he believed. One day the methods of intuition would become apparent, and he would use them.

He wondered what new skill he would work to acquire then?

Darth Vader’s black ship, the Executor, came within visual range, and 4-LOM initiated docking procedures. Even as he worked, subprocessors in his artificial mind computed the answer to his last question. Suddenly he knew what skill he would pursue after he mastered intuition.