Borderlines of Identity

[Amilthi]

Today Amilthi had decided that it was finally time to pursue a question that had been at the back of her mind for some time now; since that weird day on which her then-Master Vin Galan had shown her the working of telepathy and... something else. So she had gone to the Tython branch of the archives in the morning and looked around for information on more substantial mental techniques than just simple transmissions of verbal thoughts - on the communicative side - and simple suggestions - on the manipulative one. There hadn't been much to find. There were a few mentioned of a technique where several Jedi seemed to somehow unite their whole minds, but that seemed a bit much; and no explanation of how exactly it was done. So she had asked the archivist, who had told her that such a topic was better researched in the library on Empress Teta, but that she could talk to a Master and ask personally. She had suggested Master Ebberla Daw.

So the early afternoon had Amilthi standing at the door of said Master's quarters. She could of course have sent her a message via the temple's communication system, but somehow, she felt it was always nicer to ask for an appointment in person. She could always fall back on the other way if she didn't catch Master Daw.

The Padawan raised her hand and knocked.

 

[GABA]

No body would come to the door when Ami knocked.

Luckily, Ebberla was on her way back to her quarters, her arms filled with the parts she had been collecting for the construction of her new lightsaber. Spending the better part of her day refining her blade emitter, she now returned with her pieces, feeling a sense of accomplishment, however, it was soon replaced with a piqued curiosity as she saw someone at the door of her quarters. She reached out with the Force, touching the presence before she would address them with her words.

"Hello." Ebberla greeted Ami, studying the girl for a moment, "Something I can help you with?" she asked hitting the numbers on the keypad to her door with her pinky.

 

[Amilthi]

As Amilthi's knocking still wasn't answered after ten seconds, she was about to turn away when she had a distinct feeling that someone was approaching. She turned and saw a tall woman pacing determinedly in her direction. She didn't even need to think to assume that this was the Master she was looking for - although a moment later, it felt odd to have this strong feeling of knowing that it was so apparently out of the blue.

A smile lit up on her face, Amilthi folded her hand in front of her stomach, as she so often did, and bowed lightly to Ebberla.

"Oh, good afternoon, Master Daw", she said politely. "I would like to speak with you some time concerning certain..." - she almost said "applications", but then thought better of it - "effects of the Force, and I came here to ask when you could spare the time."

 

[GABA]

The locked clicked and the door slid open, Ebberla beckoned for Ami to follow her inside. "Effects of the Force?" she questioned, the phrase was awefully vague for the Jedi, however it kept her interests in the padawan.

"Of course, I'll try to answer them to the best of knowledge." she said setting her belongings down on a work bench tucked in the corner of her room. She turned back to the dark haired girl and smiled, "However, first thing first, I never did catch your name." she said and then felt her stomach dropped, she hoped she didn't know this girl from her time as Sage Master. Ebb had found more people knew her than she knew them. Coming to her about their stories and Ebb could only shake her head and try to accept what they told her was truth. Though she had some padawans try to be cheeky claiming she had owed them some credits. She made sure that did not go over well if they tried it again.

"Name first and then ask your question."

 

[Amilthi]

Amilthi looked confused for the blink of an eye and then realized that she hadn't introduced herself because she had just jumped at the Master's question what she was here for and answered it. That had been a bit unthoughtful, but she was sure she would remember it for the next couple of times she met a new person now.

"Thank you, Master. My name is Amilthi Camlenn", she said after she followed the Master inside. The woman didn't seem to be annoyed, so she saw no reason to apologize for her slightly late introduction. For a brief moment, she had the feeling that Master Daw was rather in a state of slightly nervous anticipation; that seemed quite improbable, and Amilthi wondered if she hadn't just imagined it. She didn't even know what it was - a glance, a gesture, something altogether invisible?

She folded her hands again and began to explain what she had come for. "'Effect' may not have been the most illuminating word. I am looking to learn more about the ways in which we can affect each other's minds through the Force. I know how to transmit my thoughts through it, and how to make weak minds believe they are their own. I have also experiences that it is possible to share emotions, though I'm not able to do this myself. I wonder what else can be done in this area. Is it possible to transmit sensory perceptions? Share memories? Or further yet, implant them? Change another's emotional state? The library of this temple turned out to be surprisingly unhelpful in these matters", she closed with a wry smile.

 

[GABA]

Ebberla quickly cleared a space for her and Ami to sit, her quarters were still quite messy, she had not taken the time to clean the clutter she seemed to acquire in her absence from the Jedi. The girl introduced herself as Amilthi and Ebb made note of the girl including her signature in the Force. She proceeded to ask her question, to explain what she was searching for.

She listened carefully and slowly a smiled formed on the woman's lips.

"The mind is a curious thing." Ebb stated, "Especially when you're able to use the Force. What you are referring to sounds like a generalization of mind tricks, we're with a little aid from the Force we can persuade those weak minded to bend their wills and follow ours. As for emotions, the same thing, empathy. Emotions are a natrual thing, we let our thoughts influence them. Ever seen a really good speaker? Have you watched the crowds cheer? You don't even need the Force, you just need to know what to say." Ebberla explained.

"You first need to know the person sitting across from you." she said scooting closer to Ami, "Like you, I know you're curious to know more, I can feed into that curiosity. Or if we talk about a Sith, they use their emotions to dominate, feed into them, easy access into their minds." she explained, pausing to make sure Ami understood.

 

[Amilthi]

Amilthi took the seat she was offered and folded her hands in her lap, ready to listen. The Master's introduction mentioned nothing she wasn't aware of, which left her with the problem of how to communicate that fact without appearing ungrateful or arrogant.

"Yes... But words can convey only so much, can't they? How often do people struggle to conjure in others precisely the image they want to convey, how often does it fail because the other simply can't relate to what they're trying to describe?"

 

[GABA]

Ebberla thought on her question, in all honesty the Jedi never took much thought into how she did her illusions and mind tricks, they came as she willed, came how she wanted them to appear.

"I think its a basis of personal opinion; illusions and persuasion are unique in that they manifest by the will of the user. The trick that I find, is you must believe what you are creating and saying. If you don't believe it yourself, then why would the person you're tricking into believing, believe it also?" she explained.

"I find its the subtle things that make a good illusion: beings, its eyes and the accents in voices; the gleam of the light on a piece of fruit or elaborate gem of a necklace. Most the time they fail because they do not carry these subtle details, things you and I won't notice until they are not there."

 

[Amilthi]

Amilthi listened, and with heightened attentiveness. Now they were getting somewhere.

"That makes sense to me. It makes me wonder if it doesn't mean that implanting a false memory is actually easier than making see someone an illusion. Memories are often bleached, paler, and with much less detail than what is being seen at every moment, so much less care would be needed in devising them. But then maybe there's a difference and it's harder to anchor something in memory than in present perception?"

Amilthi did feel that she was getting ahead of herself a bit, though. What she had just expressed was just an idea that her mind had jumped at upon hearing the Master's words. It was an extremely interesting possibility, but maybe it wasn't the first one should explore; especially in practice. It was actually a very dangerous one. Seeing an illusion, and later recognizing it for one, wasn't so hard on a mind; essentially, it happened every night for those who remembered their dreams. But having a memory implanted and then learning that it was a false one, that put considerable strain on a person's identity. Sentient minds were to some degree aware that their senses could be fallible, but they somehow had an ingrained inclination to trust their memories and had a very hard time believing and acting upon the fact that those, too, could be very unreliable. Giving someone an extra memory was dangerous and potentially disruptive even if you were going to tell them afterwards.

"Sometimes, though, one would want isn't necessarily for the other person to believe. Sometimes it would be nice to just show an image and have them know it's not to be believed, like projecting something into the view of their mind's eye. This, too, probably requires less care than making it actually believable, so putting everything together, if I take one of my own memories, which I don't even have to create, but can just conjure in my mind, and want you to see or feel it in your imagination, while still recognizing it's not a memory of your own, that would actually be the easiest among the things that I was asking about, right?"

 

[GABA]

"Implanting a memory? Well that's the basis of a mind trick, you're persuading one to believe one thing instead of another. Say you come across armed guards, you can persuade them to believe they did not see you and something else, or they did not." Ebberla explained, she thought the padawan may be over thinking the topic.

"Illusions, depends, you can create the illusion in their mind, or through the Force, its different. Projecting an illusion may be more difficult as you suspect due to the fact you will have to apply it to all their senses depending on the situation. A memory, all you need is a suggestion and the person can form it to however as you want." The Jedi scooted to the edge of her seat as she explained, obviously enjoying herself. It had been a while since the Jedi was able to hold discussion with other Jedi on the subject.

"As for sharing memories..." Ebb thought, a smile came across her lips as she recalled sharing a memory once, "Its possible, but you must be deep within their mind." she said.

 

[Amilthi]

"But the simplest manipulations, like making a guard believe you weren't there after all, involve changing only recent memories which don't have much else connected to them. That's not so difficult, but it's quite a different thing from inserting a memory much earlier, isn't it? Like making them believe that something or other happened in their childhood, or even a couple of days ago. I wonder if we're lucky that this is so much more difficult, or if I should say it's a pity." Amilthi stopped for a moment and realized that what she had said was likely to give the Master a wrong idea of what she was thinking. They were always very zealous about warning of the dangers of power. They were right to be, of course; sentients didn't usually handle power very well. Sometimes, though, she wondered if the Jedi didn't go a bit overboard with it and were starting to use it as an excuse for failing to live up to their potential. Despite the many, many fallen Jedi of history, Amilthi refused to believe that handling power really couldn't be done right, and she had an impression that insufficient attention was given to figuring out how. She also had her doubt that meditating on the light side of the Force was really all that helpful; a pretty natural doubt if you didn't believe the distinction between the light and the dark side to be metaphysically real.

However, the Padawan wasn't quite ready to engage the Master in a conversation on these issues. There was a significant risk that it would get out of hand and prevent her from extracting further information and instruction.

The thoughtful expression on her face lightened up slightly and was replaced again by eager curiosity. "As for just sharing memories, though", she said, changing the topic to the second point that Master Daw had addressed, "I think I may not have expressed myself quite precisely. What I had in mind was, essentially, remembering something actively and then showing it to another person. Surely you don't have to delve deeply into their mind for that? So what you say suggests to me that it's possible to access someone else's memories and browsing them like one would one's own - or let them do that with one's own. Is that correct?"

 

[GABA]

Ebberla couldn't help her smirk as the padawan delve into the limitlessness of mental manipulations. Though she understood why she had stopped, the Master could relate how boundaries in this area of Force expertise crossed many lines and there were still many Jedi in the Order who flatly believed what the two of them found in their strengths and fascination would be considered a dark side power.

Sharing memories, Ebberla had done and she nodded, "Yes, you can share your memories, if you want another to see what you saw, you can make that mental connection with them without having them lower their own mental defenses to do so." she explained, "Along with images, you can project how you felt also, however, I warn that can surely blend into the darkside, depending what your intent may be of course." warned the Jedi.

"However, I also experienced pulling up another's memories, it was a beach more speficially, however, their own mental defenses were lowered in order for me to be able to shift through it all."

 

[Amilthi]

Amilthi noticed the smirk on the Master's face at the point where she had redirected the conversation. It was a sort of knowing smirk, meaning that Master Daw had understood her move, and Amilthi appreciated that she went along with it. In order to study the kind of mental manipulation they were talking about here in the first place, Ebberla had to have been... less fearful than many, at some point in time. But it wasn't a given that she hadn't since recoiled from what she had learned and would advise others against going down this path. So far, however, there had been no indication that this was the case.

Consequently, the young woman was rather confused by hearing a warning in a place where she had not at all expected it. haring memories leading to the Dark Side? That, indeed, was an idea that had not occurred to Amilthi, and puzzled over it for a moment before she found a way to make sense of it. No, she was never going to share that memory. Not even if she wanted to torture someone. She knew herself well enough to be certain of this, even though an Amilthi that would psychologically torture someone was a very counterfactual creature. Even such an Amilthi wouldn't hurt someone else at the expense of her own happiness, and retrieving the memory in sufficient detail for it to be usable that way would be very unpleasant.

She wondered what it meant that the other woman had thought about such possibilities, and regarded her curiously. She didn't dwell on the thought, however, and as Ebberla ended, she broke into an amused smile. "It must have been a rather special beach, then."

 

[GABA]

The Jedi Master's cheeks turned bright red, not expecting the conversation to suddenly focus on her beach example. The Corellian's mental defenses swelled making sure it was pushed far back into her reserves as it wasn't something appropriate unless having girl talk with close friends.

"It was." she grinned, "One of those more special moments." the woman shifted in her seat, "So then Amilith," she started, looking to change back to more scholarly topics, "Was I able to answer your question, well...questions on memories and such?" she asked the padawan.

 

[Amilthi]

Amilthi was briefly taken aback by the reaction she had unintentionally provoked by showing a bit of interest in the other person. Most people reacted more positively to it. She gave a mental shrug and followed along with steering to conversation down the topical road. It couldn't be said that the Master was being very cooperative about that, either. Obviously, her questions had been answered - but equally obviously, the questions she had actually asked allowed weren't the only ones she had.

"Well... It seems that all the things I asked about are in fact possible. If you don't mind a follow-up, though..." She grinned slightly. "... how? How does one learn these things, anyway, without trying them out? Simple mind tricks are intuitive enough, there's not much to practice about them, except things involving yourself, like self-confidence. But the things we just spoke about... ?" Ethically developping these skills seemed like a real puzzle at the moment.

 

[GABA]

"How does one learn?" Ebb asked outloud, she didn't think there was a complicated answer to it, just an ethical question. "Simple, they only way you can see if it will work is by doing it. However, you must be ready for the consequences. You must ask yourself if you are willing to accept what will happen to those you affect directly and indirectly." Ebberla explained folding her hands before her.

"Say, take our guard for example, you decide to show him he is elsewhere so you may sneak on by. When he comes out of it and if he comes out of it, how will that effect him with his employer? Or what if he has a family, how will that effect them knowing that husband, father or guard had just let a Jedi slip into his employer's place? Will you be willing to accept that you could be responsible for his execution, responsible for his family having no source of income now?" The Jedi Master explained. She knew mind tricks and illusions were boarding on the darker edges of the Force, it was a bending of other wills, and the Force's will at that. An area of the Force a Jedi should be vigilant of their actions.

 

[Amilthi]

Amilthi looked at Ebberla uncomprehendingly. The example was very confounded with a whole lot of factors, and much about it had nothing to do with mind tricks. "That has just as move to do with the decision to sneak in in the first place", she said with a shrug, and dismissed it. "So you need another person for practicing sensory illusions, very well. I'll just have to find a volunteer. If someone asked me, I'd do it. Knowing how much you can't trust your senses may be an unnerving experience, but that's about it. In fact, it would also benefit the subject because they would learn to better discern illusions. On the other hand, if someone asked me about practicing memory manipulation on me, I'd emphatically refuse. False memories are frightening, especially if they're very vivid, and I don't know how I would get rid of them when someone tells me afterwards they're not real. It might affect my personality in entirely unpredictable ways... So, no. I'm not curious enough for that. Mind you, I have no intention of going around and altering people's selves. But I can imagine a number of beneficial applications. For example, I bet you could cure phobias quite easily that way. And sometimes, the way a person is is simply not acceptable. Then, instead of having their life ruined, they could be changed so as to be able to live productively and happily. We try that all the time anyway, but just with words. What's wrong with increasing the chances of success?"

She paused for a moment, and suddenly straightened up and grinned brightly. "Actually, I think I know what I'm going to do", she said enthusiastically. "If I can convince a psychiatric hospital to set up a trial with patients willing to try out a very unusual therapy, that'll be perfect!" Amilthi was quite pleased with herself for coming up with this idea. Not only would it allow her practice in the skill she wanted to develop - it could potentially help people, and it would be a very interesting experience for herself. Possibly, she would visit her former home Ralltiir for this, which would already be an interesting experience in itself. Whether or not she wanted to see her parents was a question to be figured out some time later...

 

[GABA]

"It is truly fickle." Ebberla said as the padawan went on to explain her methods of practice. She herself, knew the practice in of itself was hard to come by, most of the time she had to do in the field, after learning about the theory. Though she would agree, she wouldn't let anyone else try to manipulate how she remembered things, it was a very fine line of Jedi values and she was more than certain it dipped more into the dark side than it did in the light.

She did think the girl's practice idea would work, and it would be a good idea to use in such a situation, "Not a bad idea," Ebb started, "However, its not ideal either, just remember the consequences of your actions. If you do implant a false memory, you'll need to be ready to accept what happens to that person. Will that memory make sense? Will it contradict with what they already know, will they single it out and discover for themselves that it was fake. Also you must do it in consent, you can not help someone who doesn't want to help themselves." she explained, "This area is very, very grey and a dangerous aspect of the Force to delve in." she said knowing from her own experiences.

"However, if you are lead to someone who needs help and would like it, then you were obvious lead there for a reason." she smiled softly, "Just be mindful padawan of your thoughts and actions, times are dangerous enough as they are."

 

[Amilthi]

Amilthi nodded, but didn't seem very worried. "I assure you, I have every intention of telling those people exactly what it is that I'm proposing to do to them. I'm afraid for this kind of thing, the ideal practice conditions don't and can't exist. After all, you would need a mind that is somehow not a morally relevant person, which is a bit contradictory", she said with a wry smile.

"Thank you, Master. This has been quite inspirational", she said as she stood up and bowed politely. It seemed that there wasn't much more to be talked at this point, and as far as Amilthi was concerned, she had gotten almost everything she wanted and everything it seemed she would get. The Master didn't look like she was going to suggest instructing Amilthi personally, but she had learned that what she had been thinking about was possible, and that someone had learned it without losing themselves over it. And the conversation had even triggered an idea for how to proceed. These were most favorable results.