Mirrors of the Force. Part 5

an illustration to the fifth part of the great "Mirrors of the Force" StarWars fanfiction(now this part again is narrated by the girl Laar who's been taking care of a badly wounded jedi) an awesome story written by my dear friend Sebastian (to comment on the literary aspects of our collaboration - please{} leave comments under Sebastian's submission of the story itself [link] )

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Sebastian Buchner

Mirrors of the Force
Part V

Laar's tale

“You’re so quiet today, Laar. Has something happened?”
I stop whatever I’m doing to realize I’m cleaning the same cup I started on ten minutes ago. Luckily my mother’s attention isn’t quite what it was. I wonder how I can tell her… “I got a job.”
“Oh, another of those errands, is it. You’ve done so well with those…”
“No. Not like that. It is with the Sisters. And I might be away for a bit longer than usual. Don’t worry I’ll get Jerek to be here when I’m gone or maybe Mary if he doesn’t have time. You like Mary, don’t you?” To go away into the darkness of the ship. To walk there for an hour, feeling like I’m walking right into the throat of an awful beast.
“Mary is the girl with the long braids, is she? The one from Earth?”
“The human, yes.” He is a human, too. Or what’s left of him. I almost vomited when I saw him first, when one of the machines that took care of him shone the light on him. Ti showed me a diagram, so I could see what had been done to him. One lobe of the lung, the kidneys, part of the bowels, one entire leg and half of the other and some neurological implants in his brain so that he could actually learn to control all of it with his thoughts. She made me sit there for an hour and study it, to make sure I understood all of it. I have done a bit of work for the local physician and I know enough about anatomy, but I’ll have to go and talk to one guy whose name Ti gave me. She said he knows about androids and can tell me what to watch out for in those new parts.
“Mary…that girl has a heart of gold.”
“Gold wired circuits surrounded by some synthetic alloy.” That’s what they put through his heart to make it beat again. It had stopped when they found him. It had stopped for an entire day.
“Sorry, dear?”
“I’ll make you some tea, alright?” So I can get that cup out of my hands, before I clean the coating off it. An entire day…how could he have survived this? I was looking at him as if he was some piece of a machine when he looked back at me. I thought at first that he was looking at me, wanting to blame me, but then I saw that his eyes were glazed and didn’t see anything…or not much, in any case, he did react to the light. His face was tired, but it looked so noble, just as if it didn’t really mind what had happened to the rest of him. I felt like I was standing right at a deathbed, but also at an altar, if that makes sense. There was something about him that almost felt holy to me…I wanted to reach out and touch his hand – there was no question in my mind at that point that I would care for him, I wanted to seal that somehow by touching him…that’s when I noticed the creepy boy. He sat on the floor and didn’t move and I’d never have noticed him, but one of the robots had to evade me and the beam of his light shone on the boy for a moment. I was scared to death. He was pale, almost as if he didn’t have any blood left in him. His eyes were big and dark and he looked like one of the freighter ghosts from stories that my mother had told us when we were kids. Whenever a ship docked, a freighter or a ferry, there was a chance that it had a freighter ghost on it. Freighter ghosts are the sadness and loneliness of all the passenger that has somehow taken the shape of a young boy and he would slip from the freighter, because the people there – understandably, I’d say – just didn’t want him, not a bit of him, and so he’d slip over to the bigger ship where he could hide and get sadder and sadder and there was no way anyone could feel joy near such a thing. It’s a children’s story but that’s what came back to my mind, quite strong, when I saw the boy.
I have to go and get Mary to come and watch mother. Jerek won’t do it, no matter what. So it’s Mary, then the android guy and back down to the injured human and the ghost boy. I can’t say I’m not scared, but even if there were hundreds of beasts and shiploads of ghosts in the dark down there I’d still go. Two more things. Ti told me that I couldn’t tell anyone about the human or about the fact that they have working robots (I figure it’s them who made Ro’s leg) which is understandable since there are so many nutcases who’d like to get their hand’s on them. I wonder if the human is one of those people who control the ship – maybe that’s the reason why they’re keeping him hidden and in this case it’s better if nobody knows about him or there’d be riots again. The other thing. Ti gave me a blaster gun. I don’t know if I can shoot with it, but it gives me a little bit of comfort and there’s no doubting that. You can’t shoot your fears with it, but it certainly makes them a little more manageable.
Mother goes to sleep. Mary isn’t in her room, so I walk down to the little public square where the food dispensary is. I’m not much for religion, but some people in our corridor are and they have taken this machine, which they call a miracle, as the reason why this ship must be managed by the gods. Every day, without fail, everybody gets his ration of synthetic food and liquid. The basic stuff is some formless, tasteless mix of nutrients, just enough to get you going for a day, but there are spice traders in the rooms next to the food dispensary, people who’ve managed to grow one or two plants or those who go and collect oxidized minerals which are ground up and added for extra taste. I wasn’t raised with all the religious talk like most of the others my age, so I always wanted to know what makes this go and what’s the reason that the thing over there’s working and calling it the gods certainly is a beautiful way, but I’ve asked the people here to describe their gods to me and they look so completely different than the gods the people in the next corridor described, so I’m not sure. It’s like asking kids what does the guy in the datapad story look like and if there are ten kids you’ll get ten different descriptions. That’s why I felt I really liked the description of the Force that I read in one of my transmissions. There was a flow of energy that you could follow, in your mind, and there was nobody saying, it has to look like this, but it was more like, you have to watch and be attentive all the time and that is really appealing to me. So, around the human down in the dark, even if he was completely damaged, really, around him I felt something of that. I am scared, but it’s not really him I’m scared of.
Mary is one of the religious types. She likes helping and explaining and she’s very simple in her way. Of course she’ll watch out for my mother. She is delighted and all that. She doesn’t even ask why I have to leave her. That’s one of the reasons why I’d rather ask her than Jerek – he wouldn’t agree until I told him exactly where I was going and I can’t do that.
I find the android guy right where Ti told me he’d be. He’s a grumpy mixbreed, but that’s actually good, because for all his complaining and grieving he doesn’t think of asking me why I need all that information. He tells me that he never had an apprentice and whose fault was that? There is some sort of joy in him to tell me all those things, just as if he had waited for really long to do exactly that. He has never seen a real life android, all his knowledge is passed down from some distant ancestor who took care of the corridor’s android (I didn’t know we had one) many centuries ago. It doesn’t quite make sense in my head, but as soon as I get him to talk about Ro and what he did to help her, things become a little more clear. I get the feeling that he’d really want to examine the robots down there who take care of the human, so it becomes a bit hard to keep my mouth shut, but I do it.
It’s a long talk and he says more than I can remember, but I feel that I am now better prepared than I was before. I tell him I’ll come back and ask him more, which I will do as soon as I have looked at the robots and the implants properly.
Now for the easy part, ha! Just grab your blaster, Laar, walk down into absolute goddamn pitch darkness until the only sounds you can hear are the monsters in your head (and pray that they are only there), be friends with a freighter ghost and take care of a possibly very important man who might die any minute or live to be faced with a reality he might not exactly like to live in. Yes, sir, is that all, sir, nothing easier than that. That’s what I was born and bred for.
But the feeling that surrounds the human is worth all of that. I believe it is. If there’s a chance for me to see more of life than these corroding corridors, that’s it and I’m going to make the best of it.

I’ve been down where the human is about ten times now. He still hasn’t spoken a word to me. It’s a bit strange since he looks at me, sometimes, and I know that he should see me, but he doesn’t. He looks inside of himself, I guess. Whatever he sees there, it seems to be more interesting than what he sees outside. Can’t blame him for that.
I understand how the implants work now. It’s quite fascinating but I know if I could explain any of it nobody here would understand it, except maybe for the android guy. The mechanical legs and arm are the best. We won’t know how well they work until the human wakes up and tries them out because he has to send the signals for movement through it. Something called the nervous system has to connect with mechanical wirings that are so impossibly sensitive you wouldn’t believe it.
I wonder what he’ll think about it when he wakes up. If he wakes up. From what I have seen he’s very stable, but you never know. It can’t be pleasant to wake up with an iron arm and two iron legs. It isn’t iron, of course, but something half metal and half plastic. It must be worth a lot.
Mother gets worse and worse every day. The people who know her all look at me with this mixture of pain and guilt and I don’t want to talk to anyone about her. Sometimes when I can’t sleep I try to find out what I feel about her dying. I don’t feel any guilt for leaving her alone to check on the human. For one thing there is so much hope surrounding the human, so many positive feelings. When I get closer to the room he’s in, see the lamps of the robots shining through the dark corridor and hear the hum of the machines that help his body to get better, I get a tickle down my spine. As soon as I enter the room I feel calm. I could look at him for hours, study his face, look at the places where his body turns into metal until I think he’s actually transforming into metal right before my eyes. If he were all metal, I could take him with me (and this is a stupid fantasy that I have sometimes) and we’d walk all the way to the top of the ship. We’d be like pilgrims, only that we wouldn’t end up like the outcasts and the stragglers, because I have a blaster and he’s all made of metal, so nobody could harm us or make us feel afraid. Something else. He smells really good. There are so many bad smells in the corridors, I thought I’d never smell something good again. Now when I come back I can smell the death of my mother. It sounds strange, I know, but I haven’t noticed before that death has a smell. It’s an absolutely hopeless kind of smell and it doesn’t go away. Everything in our room smells of it. So, if there’s anybody reading this pad here, maybe you’ll blame me for not feeling guilty about letting somebody else take care of my mother while she may leave here any day, but you don’t know what death smells like or else you wouldn’t blame me.
Now I walk down there for the eleventh time. What I notice about myself is that I’ve gotten both more assured and more paranoid about going down there. Whenever I meet somebody I think of things to tell them so they wouldn’t suspect anything. I made the mistake of telling everybody different stories because I thought I’d get bored by telling the same story all over again, but if you have to lie it’s much better to stick to one story. Now I’m always afraid that I tell someone the wrong story. It’s not likely that anyone will really listen to what I say anyway, but I can’t help feeling that. If somebody would find out where I am going I’d be in deep trouble.
Ti checks on me sometimes. Sometimes she’s waiting down there when I come and she watches me. I get the feeling that she trusts me and that she is a little surprised that she does, so she comes and checks just to see if her feeling’s true. It makes me feel very good about myself. I’ve seen Xza once when I had to come by their office – she’s been as friendly and chatty as she always is, but I couldn’t tell whether she knows about Ti, the human and me. She’s her sister, so it’s more likely that she knows, but when I think of Jerek I wonder maybe it’s the same with them and they don’t really trust each other. I still don’t know who the human is. I wonder, if he wakes up, if I can get him to help me. Ideally, Ti shouldn’t be there when he wakes up, because she’s going to do with him whatever it is she’s planning as soon as he’s awake. I bet she will. Now, I’m a little scared of Ti and I somewhat admire her, but yesterday I was sitting in my room watching my mother. I tried not to think about death but I couldn’t help imagining her dying and turning all into dust. And I was thinking if the same thing is to happen to me one day, it won’t happen on board of this ship. I’ve been thinking that often, I know, but this time I also thought that it doesn’t matter what Ti wants with the human and it’s good that she trusts me. That will make it easier for me to betray her.
I don’t know the two guards that wait at the door today. One looks at me and I see he’ll try to stop me, so I pull my datapad from my pocket and show it to him. “Transmission.”
“Can’t let you go, girl. There’s a new group outside, today. People been saying they come from the Last. You know what the Last is?”
“It’s a kind of prison corridor, right?”
“Damn straight. I can’t let you go.”
“But I need to go. I’ve got a weapon. I can take care of myself.”
“It makes no bloody difference. If your fingernails were poison and your look could turn to stone I still can’t let you out. Listen, girl, if I let you out there the best thing that can happen to you today is that you are being killed before you’re getting raped and not the other way round, okay?”
“But what about the people who are always out there? Will you let them in for today?”
He snorts and grimaces. I think it’s a grin. “The new guys will look around and if they find something they like they’ll take it. Those who survive will clean up once the guys are gone.”
I just stare at him. I don’t know what to say.
“It’s a kind of natural selection, ain’t it? There’s been so many of them recently I really don’t mind a few roughies cleaning up the place for a change.”
I really want to tell the guy there and then that he’s absolutely despicable. “Those are people just the same. If you get the guard together you could shoot at the guys from the Last and at least scare them off.”
“And risk them getting in? Listen, girl, we’re not going to risk the lives of everybody in here just for a few stragglers. It’s great that you have a heart of gold and if there were more people like you this might just be a bearable place, but I’d rather have you shut it and leave. I’m going to ask you all polite, alright?”
“Shut it and leave isn’t exactly polite, you know.”
“Well, you ain’t seen me ask all impolite yet, have you?” He grins at me again and winks. I don’t mind the guy, he seems good-natured, and what happens to the stragglers is horrid, but I simply have to go down to check on the human. Everything else is secondary.
“Did you let Ti pass, maybe? I was looking for her and couldn’t find her.”
He raises his eyebrows. “That is the Sisters’ business, girl.”
He’s not going to help me. I have to find Jerek’s friends in the guard. Maybe they will.





The Jedi's tale

Our game has not yet ended. Li sits in front of me at the other side of the game board. It is not large, but I know that it is impossible to reach him. We might as well be separated by a continent or a sea. I try to sit up, I try to make out the room where we sit, but every time I try to do so my attention is drawn, inexorably, towards the game. Every move sends shivers down my spine.
Li moves his avatar along the checkered boards. They are simple, nothing distinguishes one from the other until he stops at the board that the dice have determined and begins to speak. His voice changes. Once it is the high-pitched, enthusiastic voice that woke me up so often, that woke me up into sunlight and to the sound of the surf. Another time it is the thoughtful, sad voice he adopted later, shortly before he died. Sometimes he speaks with the tones of someone ages old. Every once in a while – it cannot be more than once a day, the moments between those solemn reminders creep like rock snails – he reminds me that he is dead and that we are playing for his life. My answer is predictable, but I can only ask it, again and again, to make sure that I am not dreaming (and I know I am).
“If I win, will I be able to return you to life?”
At this he looks up and for one terrible moment he looks changed. I do not know if it is the change that death has worked on him, but I am horrified by his face during that one moment and I look back at the board immediately.
“Is it my turn? Three forward, no axioms.” I move and as soon as I put my avatar on the board the memory stirs from the checkered surface until it stands glass-like, foaming before me. “This is in March. We have just finished collecting the clackers.” The clackers were crabs as large as our hands. “There is a girl that I like and she has asked me to bring her one. I pick out one that looks most beautiful to me and you tell me you want to have it.”
I know that he tilts his head and I can feel his gaze on me. It makes me sweat. As I watch the memory unfold I wonder if it is truly one of mine. It seems so neat, so clear. My life has been many things, but rarely neat or clear. There is no thought in it, no sensuality, nothing that I associate with the inside of my head. There is only wanting. “We quarrel about the clacker. You take it from me and you see how much more I want it now that you have it, so you throw it against a rock as hard as you can. I see it lying on the ground. It is shattered, white blood and stuff leaking out. Continue.”
I can hear Li clap his hands together. He sounds joyful and I feel every muscle in my body, tensing. “You beat me as hard as you’ve never beaten me. The girl sees you beating me and she comes and screams at you to stop.”
This is too neat. These are the rules of the game. I can accept memories that feel wrapped up and comfortable, but I will know that they are lies. Or I can challenge them and look for the frayed and unsatisfying memories that are truths. I get the terrible feeling that the only way to win Li’s life back is to accept the lies. “Challenge. I beat you up and take another clacker and the girl says she likes it. I never tell her about the other one or that I beat you up and I suspect she is lying to me about liking it.”
I look up again. Li seems once more the way I like to remember him. He throws the dice. He makes his move, counting the boards with his finger before he touches the avatar. “After I’m dead you keep pretending that I am alive and you talk to me, whenever you are alone or when you think nobody can hear you. ..”
“Obviously,” I interrupt, trying to make my words sound tender. “Otherwise you wouldn’t be here.” As soon as I say it, I begin to feel uneasy, as if I have broken some rule of the game. Li doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t react but simply goes on speaking.
“I find this very amusing. One day I tell Tach about it and he thinks you are insane and wonders what he shall do with you.” Li throws his head back and roars with laughter as if he had just told the most wonderful of jokes. “He is relieved when you are reported to the Jedi and are being taken from him.”
It hurts. Anger and fear, but I have to keep it inside. Those were doubts that plagued me during my first year in the academy. Tach had made no attempt to keep me with him. Maybe he had felt that there was no way that he could take a boy from a Jedi institution, no matter what he may have felt for him.
“Accept or Challenge?” Li rocks on his heels, looking at me curiously, almost hungrily. I do not know how to answer. “I’m waiting. Accept or Challenge?”
“I do not know!”
“Accept or Challenge? You can’t stop the game.”
A strange shock courses through my body. I feel the world around myself become insubstantial. The feeling of being in a room with Li dissolves. I want to grab him, hug him, hold him to me. Anything but to lose him now with the game undecided…he’s gone. It’s black and somebody shines a light in my face.

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part I [link]
part II [link]
part III [link]
part IV [link]
part VI [link]
part VII [link]
PartVIII [link]
Part IX [link]
Part X [link]