The devil is in the details

[Zee]

Dear Grandmaster Novan,

Do you know how to cut off someone from the Force? I asked other Jedi, but they tended to answer in low whispers about the Darkside, which was a bit of an apples-and-oranges situation. I don’t understand what that has to do with anything.

I don’t understand many things. In the Old Order, I’d have been a ‘wash-out’ – someone delegated to a low-key place such as the AgriCorps. My ‘powers’ can only accomplish very, very small things. You have to admit that, statistically, there will always be people too weak in the Force to reach the Knight status. The problem with such people is that there is a boring war going on, and many wish to use them as weapons.

I’ve been told to train more. But of what use would it be to me to spend years of my life learning how to levitate a rock, when I can already balance the universe on the edges of my graphs? I am a mathematician, and a bit of a botanist. I take pride in what I’m doing. I wish that I could do it in a safer environment. I’m not made for danger. I can’t even remember the ‘in case of general alarm’ instructions. Or the location of the canteen, for that matter.

That’s why I asked you if you know how to take away someone’s Force powers.

As a proper Jedi, you probably find this very selfish. To tell the truth, I never understood why everyone cares about this galaxy so much. Either to conquer, or protect it…It’s a laughably big place, this galaxy. And I can find enough maths to entertain me in a handful of sand.

I imagine that you are very busy. Therefore, I cheated by attaching this orange to my letter, in hopes that it will humor you enough to read my words. I am not sure whether it counts as bribery. The fragrant peel is genetically citron; the inside, however, is orange. It’s a rare ‘graft chimera’ – not a hybrid, but the mixture of cells from two separate species. Not even the Kaminoans would be able to replicate it exactly the same.

Kind regards,

Zee Irving

On the back of the page it was written ‘To Larik Novan’.

The aforementioned letter was crumpled around a strangely-colored orange tucked right in front of a door mysteriously labeled ‘Office 327’ on the upper deck of the Indomitable-Class Frigate ‘Galactic Evolution’. Known (to few) as the Jedi mobile base, the place wasn’t so much of a starship as a city on wings. Thousands of Jedi, mostly padawans, and perhaps just as many members of the now obsolete Galactic Alliance lived, trained and worked under its roofs. Many had lost their families in the war. Others had formed new families, and it was not that unusual to see snotty barefoot brats chasing each other along the corridors. They had their own childhood-jargon and didn’t know what a sky was.

Yet, among the older generation, the ship wasn’t as much of a melting pot as a mosaic of cultures. You saw it everywhere. Walk through the cramped cubicles of the programmers, and you’d be greeted by a Kaleesh traditional mask, a False Firethorn tree, a cheap snowglobe of the Coruscant Jedi temple, a living gecko, a postcard from Naboo. In this Babel, even someone as strange as Zee Irving could find a place.

She’d come because of the money. She didn’t have any. Gar’phil was not feeling well. The old Givin that had been Zee’s mentor and math teacher for the last several years had gone back to Yag’Dhul for a medical check-up. Cursed with the stigmata of Force-sensitivity, Zee found it safer to cling to the Jedi Order. For now. Her father, the Lord of the Ruins, had kindly suggested that she could join him instead on his archaeological excavations. No Sith would like to visit those remote places for a mere hunch. But Zee was too proud to consider subjecting ‘that person’ to the smallest risk, not when she knew that she didn’t care about him as much as he cared about her.

So she was here. At the very least, it was a place where her burning interest in plant biology finally found a fitting challenge. The starship wasn’t fully self-sufficient – it could never be. Unlike an Ithorian herdship, it hadn’t been built with ecosystems in mind. But the fibrous mushrooms glowing on shelves in endless dim rooms made delicious steaks and angel-hair desserts. Salads growing in air and nutrient spray were as tasty as if they’d just been picked from the field. It amazed Zee how much there was to know about something so basic.

She was fond of the laboratory area. The entry card data could testify on the girl’s reticence to walk outside it. She showered in the Emergency Shower Room for Chemical Spills and slept in a sleeping bag in a corner of a rarely-used lab room. With most of the technicians being Force-unaware, and with Zee’s unconscious Force powers pulling some strings here and there, she was rarely noticed. When she was noticed there outside of ‘working hours’, she was promptly kicked outside and inevitably got lost.

Right now, she was glancing down a microscope at a culture of dividing plant cells. A cool breeze blew from the sterile cabinet containing the machine, ensuring that no germs would drift in and contaminate her work. She thought of Gar’phil, and then of the mysterious Novan who may or may not be on the ship, or use that office. She thought of her grandparents and home. But it was nicer to think of plants. Curled-up in her labcoat, with her soles resting on the laboratory stool and her arms wrapped around her knees, she stared and smiled.

OOC: The aforementioned strange orange inspired from this.

 

[TAC]

"Of course, Master Legume. I appreciate your concern, goodbye." The Corellian clicked the comlink off, sighing to himself as he placed it on his utility belt. As he stepped into a lift on the Galactic Evolution he pulled out his datapad, swipping through several messages that started with the word URGENT. He responded to one of them, clicking away at the screen and sending out the short message.

When he finished he only had to wait for a moment for the lift to reach the appropriate door. Stuffing his datapad back into a small satchel he stepped off, heading for his office that doubled as his sleeping space. As he stood next to the door, quickly punching in the 7-character-long access code, he noticed the small orange with a handwritten note attached to it.

The Corellian bent down and scooped up the odd combination as the door swished open, and he stepped inside turning the small marvel in his hand. The door closed behind him and he took off his outer cloak, belt, and small satchel, setting them on the chair as he continued to look at the small fruit with the note attached to it.

Larik fell into his bed with a huff, setting the fruit beside him as he opened up the letter. He read it quickly, a frown captivating his gaze as he set the letter down, frowning at the wall as he rested on the arm that was stuck behind his head. With a sigh he pulled himself off his bed and reattached his utility belt.

Sticking the letter into his belt and consulting his datapad before he left, the Jedi Master headed with some urgency for the lift. The man punched in the appropriate floor, and a few minutes later after riding lifts and winding through several corridors he arrived in a labratory location.

He felt the pull of the the young Padawan, Zee irving, who he had met only once before. She was bent loosely over a microscope, observing something while at the same time appearing lost in thought. He observed her for a moment before clearing his throught, his face solumn but pleasent.

"Hello, Padawan Irving," the Grand Master greeted, "I got your note."

 

[Zee]

His voice rippled through Zee’s concentration. Her gloved fingers twitched against the Petri dish before her brain could consciously grasp the words. She covered the culture plate with a lid, making sure that her cells stayed hydrated and happy. An elbow hit the edge of the cabinet. She turned on the revolving chair, once, with her arms wrapped around her knees. Her eyes had the strange glaze of microscope lenses.

So this was the Grandmaster?

The padawan’s lips narrowed and her gaze turned sideways, in the universal expression of ‘I think I’ve seen you before’. Perhaps it wasn’t unexpected that she wouldn’t remember somebody she’d last seen flipping burgers and, you know, trying to save her life. Zee rarely remembered anybody. Even if they were two and a half meters high and purple. Her face relaxed in the ‘I don’t remember, but I’ll be told if it’s important so it’s not worth worrying’ manner, and she spoke:

“Was the orange tasty?” Her gaze jolted towards his, and then away, and then back, and then again, like two sharp nails screeching on the blackboard of the mind. Eye contact often made it more difficult for her to think, but she had been told that it’s proper. Otherwise, the girl appeared calm. “Also, shall I assume that there is a complicated answer to my initial question?”

If there had been a simple answer, would he have been here in person? Zee found it hard to imagine. Of course, she wouldn’t have thought that the Grandmaster’s visit was anything but a stop during an inspection of the labs. It wasn’t exactly his responsibility, but who would miss on an opportunity to see all the delicious science that was being done there? No one, Zee decided. Unless the problem was graver than it looked…

“Or did my particular choice of words turn me into a Security Issue?” The girl added, similarly calmly. When reading her letter, it had occurred to her, one may wonder whether such a selfish person won’t sell everybody to the Sith in exchange for an annual subscription to a scientific journal. Those things were expensive! Of course, thinking so would be one with little idea of how Zee’s brain worked. She was a wild card even among the research folk, who were actually far more social than the majority imagined.

The girl hadn’t moved from her curled-up position, neither had she offered the Jedi Grandmaster a seat, despite the several revolving laboratory stools scattered in the room. Manners were a tricky subject for Zee. She managed them well enough given time and a working holonet connection, as it could be seen in her letter. But he had taken her by surprise. And her usual train of thoughts was a singleminded repursorlift locomotive that whizzed past ‘unimportant’ stations without a glance.

 

[TAC]

The young Padawan was straightforward with the Grand Master, seeming to be surprised that he himself had come but at all intimidated by the leader of the their Order. While the man at most times pursued a nonchalant, approachable leadership style, the stories of where he had been and what he had done often intimidated some of the young and more impressionable members of the Order.

Larik had come in person because of what she was asking and how she had asked it. As the leader of the Order one of his largest and most difficult priorities was safety, most usually on the Order-wide level, but he never ignored a red flag when it popped up on his radar. The request had of course concerned him. It was not every day that Jedi, much less Padawans, inquired about such a destructive and painful use of the Force. Larik had never been a proponent of severing anyone from the Force, from Padawan to Dark Lord of the Sith.

"I have yet to eat it," the man responded, smiling to her and then letting his eyes wander around the room. Larik had never been down to the labs before. He knew they existed, but nothing had ever compelled him to visit then. It was all very interesting, or so he assumed, but he didn't really have much practical or theoretical knowledge about most of the equipment or samples that surrounded the two Jedi. The room was relatively cool, though, which he appreciated.

"But yes, it is a very complicated procedure and issue," he replied. He had wandered along with his eyes, and pulled out a chair a few feet from the Padawan, gently and slowly settling himself into it. "And while I have some concern why you're asking, yes, I wouldn't call it a security issue. Just concern." The man looked at the young being, but her expression gave no indications for him to work off of. "If I may ask, why are you looking into it?"

 

[Zee]

Zee blinked once, twice, several times. Her mouth closed with an audible clink.

“I thought I’d written it-“ The girl said, looking down at her knees. She mumbled. “Words are complicated.”

A deep breath shook her small frame. In her imagination she saw the words of her letter scattered around the floor, in ink. So many words to piece together. So complex. She straightened her back as much as possible in her awkward position.

“I don’t want to be a Jedi.”

She spoke rarely, with pauses pinning words into place.

“My interests and powers lie beyond the Force.” A wide gesture encompassed half of the room, including nearby test-tubes of various colors and a holo-screen cut by equations. “But if I just leave the Order, I will keep being a target. I don’t want to be a target.” For a moment, her voice stumbled. There circulated rumors aplenty over the ‘net about how the Sith ‘molded’ those Force-Sensitives which didn’t conform to their concepts from the get-go. One (rather catchy) song inspired from them was called ‘The Sleepless Torture Tower’.

“I don’t want to be a target.” Zee repeated, quietly. “Some may say it’s a pity to give up a talent I was born with, but the truth is that I’m an iceberg. I have little ability, and most of that is ruled by my subconscious. It can be…strange.” Her tone said: ‘uncomfortable’. She brought a hand in front of her eyes and rotated it, repeatedly clenching her fingers, as if trying to glimpse the shimmer of her strings. A part of her feared that taking away something which had been constantly influencing her life would leave her unprepared for a foreign future. How much of what she currently pictured as ‘Zee’ was herself, and how much it was the actions of the Force? But it was a choice that had to be taken. Through her outstretched fingers, she stared at the man.

“Is it wrong for me to want to become a very good scientist, rather than stay a very bad Jedi?”

She hesitated. Her fist clenched under her chin.

“Do you know, Grandmaster…” Zee asked, “…how to sever me from the Force?”

(ooc: fictional song name references an actual song)

 

[TAC]

Larik sat quietly, taking in every word the young Padawan was saying. There was something like defeat in her voice, or perhaps the sound of someone was lost, something familiar enough that he had felt it but not enough that he could name it. As she finished, posing the question he had expected but wanted to confirm, the Corellian sighed deeply. This was a request the Grand Master had never before been posed, and a conversation he had never imagined having. He looked at the woman, his eyes furrowed, but only because of the concern he felt for the young Zelosian.

Silence hung between the two Jedi for a moment, until Larik closed his eyes. "May I?" he inquired, his conscious bumping her own. He did not invade the young woman's thoughts, but instead invited her into her own, guiding her conscious so that she could feel what he felt. Then, relaxing himself, the Jedi Master allowed his dampened presence expand, allowing the feelings, thoughts, and life of every creature around them burst into view. The universe pulsated around them, the Will of the Force gently creating what Larik envisioned to be winds, as Larik and the young Padawan rode these winds out until they could see all the lives on the ship, then within the fleet, then within the sector, and finally they went so far that the galaxy burned brightly in their minds - not with the light of stars, but with the life and will of the Force. For anyone who had never experienced the sensation, it would be breath taking. For Larik, even after all of those years, he felt a small tingle in the pit of his stomach.

"The Force is life, all life," the man said to the much young woman. "It is a light more brilliant than the brightest of stars, life more vital than the healthiest and youngest of children, a will more resolute than that of the wisest of seers." Larik's voice came quietly, floating in on the wind as if he was speaking from some great distance away to the young Padawan.

"The expansiveness of the Force goes beyond our desires to be leaders, soldiers, peacekeepers, or scientists," he continued as they overlooked the expansiveness of all living life. Then, within an instant, the great light of the universe folded in on itself and Larik and Zee were sucked into it. Their bodies were gone, their consciousness molded into what appeared to be black nothingness. Energy was released and a wave of light hit them as combustion took over, flooding their consciousness with the light and energy of a jumping electron. Together the two were thrown backwards into Larik's mind and Larik separated their consciousnesses, giving the young woman only a taste of the quiet melancholy that quietly permeated the Jedi Grand Master's well protected thoughts. A small fire had started in one of the petri dishes inside of Zee's cabinet.

Larik walked over to it with a small fire extinguisher he had snatched from the wall. He grabbed the dish with its burning substance and set it in front of the woman, allowing her to examine it from afar for a moment before he doused the fire. Setting the extinguisher on the desk next to her he walked quietly back to his chair, pushing it back under the desk before turning back to the Padawan.

"I learn something new about the universe every day, Zee." He smiled sadly at the young woman, who herself had only just begun her journey in life. "I have stared into the great expanse beyond our galaxy, I have stared into the eyes of a man as I killed him, and I have stared into the constantly moving expanses of the Force as you glimpsed just a moment ago. Each day I am overwhelmed by what the Force has to teach me, the secrets I unlock." He turned, walking to the door, and paused in the door frame to look back to the Padawan.

"I can sever you from the Force, Padawan Irving, if that is the path that you choose." he said, a small, sad smile on his face. "But first, you should seek to understand what the Force might be able to teach you." Without another word the man disappeared into the hall way, the slow and quiet clicks of his boots audible for only a moment as he headed back for the lift.

 

[Zee]

Zee’s awareness stumbled awkwardly towards Larik, like a child clinging to your sleeve on a dark night, stepping on your toes, flailing her arms, falling face-down and rasping her face on the cold, wet asphalt. Even with the other Jedi’s guidance, it took time until her mental projection curled up, tired, near his metaphorical boots. She wasn’t good at this. He let her do a lot of the ‘hard’ work, or at least mental effort that she perceived as hard, in contrast with Kai Sera’s mind-linking and his flowing stream of memories.

Before she could catch her virtual breath, the world exploded.

You could say that their shared consciousness spread its wings to the edges of the galaxy, or that the galaxy itself contracted to a crystalline snow-globe inside their skulls, but the truth was words could not hope to lock inside them the images of their extraordinary journey. To achieve a comparable state, one would need to stare carefully at hyperspace calculations while smoking substances of debatable legality. Lives flowed past, until the galaxy was practically spilling over. The image was subtly painful for the girl who could have sold her empathy coefficient to a droid manufacturing company. Everything happened too fast for her to be afraid. At most, stubs of thoughts rippled inside her mind, saplings of arguments against some of the Grandmaster’s statements which were less supported by evidence, but the fast pace of the spinning world washed them away.

The Galaxy disappeared, and for a moment Zee’s consciousness was caught within a budding fire: a small, colorless flame feeding on glucose from the culture medium, just strong enough to melt a hole in the plate’s transparent plastic ceiling. Of course, at that point in time Zee didn’t understand what it was that she was feeling. She only felt the energy of plasma, and heard the endless pop of soap bubbles as clusters of plant cells broke open from their earthly shells and released their vaporous spirits to the Gelatinous Heaven of Tissue Culture with Added Sugars. The pure pain of watching die systems that she had spent weeks perfecting, transfecting with viruses, bombarding with bacteria, twisting with genes from jellyfish…, and then watching them vanish at micrometric resolution, shook her nerves like a whip. The dark mathematical depths of Zee’s mind instinctively understood the scene, even though her conscious took its time.

Instinctively, she tried to run away from the fire. But the frantic race of her conscious above the nutrient gel had also been reduced to a micrometric scale, because Zee had completely lost track of perspective. It happened often.

The Grandmaster’s words reached her mind as if through water, as Zee became aware of her body once more. The journey had ended. Her palms, for some reason, itched. He underlined with words the wonders of the Force that he had shared with her. Her heart ached. But someone had to make a choice.

“I love to learn,” she replied. Her hands moved awkwardly through the air. The nitrile laboratory gloves that she was wearing, it occurred to Zee, felt unspeakably hot. “I believe that a lot could be learned, especially if the Force was treated less subjectively. And it was interesting…You see so much, in both macro- and microcosm, things that many wouldn’t be interested in.” Zee smiled. It was a compliment. Poking the edges of the universe didn’t really help with lightsaber combat, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t important. In his way, the Grandmaster was a scholar. Zee could empathize with that. “But,” the girl spoke quietly, “I have a brain for maths and no skill for the Force. Someone has to make a choice.”

And then he left. Leaving behind a quizzical remark. It was probably in his job description.

Zee looked down at her palms. For some reason, they were starting to feel increasingly uncomfortable. Like that time when she mistook the phenol bottle for sterile water. Her skin pulsed, burned, as if it had been replaced with embers. Her lower lip trembled. What had she messed up this time?

In the corridor, a loud thud could be heard from the room that Grandmaster had just left. It was followed by a fainter thump, as Zee managed to gather herself from the floor and unwillingly headbutt the doorknob. Eventually the door clicked open, with the girl’s face peeking from behind it. A few tears streaked down her cheeks.

“Don’t just run away, help me! I have no idea…”

Her white teeth pulled the grey glove off one of her hands, revealing green, inflamed skin, with blisters on her fingertips. Zee closed her eyes and shuddered.

“I can’t remember…” She spoke, trying to recall any substance she’d worked with that would seep through gloves like that. She was looking for logic, but because of this she couldn’t see the truth.

The truth was she’d burned her hands on a fire that she’d never touched, but who would believe that?

Psychosomatic injuries are bastards. Something in Zee’s subconscious had resonated deeply with the micrometric scale, had found it so natural that it had resolved that the fire had been, whatever anyone else may say, real. Crackles of magical Jedi electricity and mere irritated nerves had done the rest. Even as the girl was speaking, another blister swelled on her little finger.

“A rectangular prism,” she sketched, sniffling, “with a cross on top.” This was a mathematician’s way of asking for the first aid kit.

If Zee had known who was to blame for her current situation, it would have occurred to the girl that she could have learned much easier from the Force if the goddamn thing stopped treating her like a roadroller treats a tree.