Zee
SWRP Writer
- Joined
- May 21, 2015
- Messages
- 78
- Reaction score
- 9
Zee sat cross-legged, on a tartan-pattern blanket spread across the floor of Hexacontagon’s control room. Her cheek thoughtfully pressed against her fist, and her elbow leaned against her knee. She silently tapped her fingers against the cool, circular board in her front. The surface was checkered in black and white, a bit like a piano. Sensing the vibration, the Emperor raised his sword and shouted a hearty (if completely muted) declamation. The grinning Fool in the nearby square made a tumble in the air, the bells in his pointed hat shaking in perfectly silent, high-resolution holography. The crouched figure shrouded in his crimson-black cape just nodded. All her Holochess pieces were dressed in nuances of red, to distinguish them from the other armies. The settings were preset to represent pieces as stylized humanoids, in the elaborate robes of one of the Three Empires, but the players’ individual control panels could be easily convinced to change them to holomonsters, geometrical figures, or any other from a small array of options. Hers was the Dragon Army, led by Tarl the Infinity-Crooked. His catchphrase was his laughter like the snap of a whip.
Oh course, he’d never existed. The Three Empires never existed. Their Saga was an old Zelosian fiction. Zelosians couldn’t even be sure that they ever had a medieval period, like Alderaan and Naboo. Their planet was secretive about its ruins. But when you’re an entire species without history, you can afford to make your own.
“Fool, coreward.” Zee announced.
The girl’s gigantic index finger patted the miniature Fool on the patched pointed hat, then gestured towards the center of the table. One square. The hologram made an exaggerate bow, comically lost his equilibrium, and tumbled to the assigned space. He dusted himself off with ridiculous care, seemingly trying to amuse the enemy piece in the adjacent square. Zee grinned weakly. Today’s 3-way-Holochess opponents had been tough, especially her fellow Padawan. If Zee hadn’t accidentally knocked over her Courtesan piece (also known as the Lady of Negotiable Affection), she’d have been out of the game long ago. It had seemed a bad move at the time, and the elegant piece – far more exotic than the Queen! – had snapped her little fan at Zee in the heavily polite equivalent of a scowl. Thinking back, this had allowed Zee a narrow escape from having her King captured. The girl was good with maths (as proven by how she’d calculated their hyperspace directions on a piece of paper, which, given her usual clumsiness, may not have been reassuring for the passengers). But Holochess required an amount of mental multitasking that left Zee’s brain stumbling.
She turned back to look at the screen, then stretched and massaged her neck.
“We’re fairly close to the Gall system.” As expected, a Givin ship would plow through hyperspace like a knife through butter. “Could we discuss the issues and our aims once more…uh, please? I tend to forget uninteresting things.” Zee said. Her eyes, rather than staring at the human Knight or Nautolan Padawan, burned through the Holochess table. She’d been told that one of them is a healer and the other had survived Naboo, which probably said as much about surviving abilities as swimming in space without a costume.
“First, the interesting things. Gall is not an agriworld, but rather a wild garden-world. You will never see genetically identical crops stretching on degrees latitude. It’s a world of gigantic canyons and forests, shaped by rivers past and present. Its people are specialists in canyon- and layered-forest agriculture. And these are not simple.” Zee’s appreciative grin underlined her intense tone. “Every square meter in a canyon” she explained, slowly sketching a U-shaped canyon with her index finger, “receives different sunlight, wind, maybe even nutrients, compared to even nearby patches. Notwithstanding the varied light spectra it had due to Gall orbiting a gas giant. In a forest,” she continued, placing her palms one over the other in the shape of shelves, “one can grow a stunning variety of trees and lianas by taking advantage of layers of shadow and patches of light. The keyword in both cases is ‘variety’.”
“Unlike the M’shin for example, Gall people are not primarily interested in plant genetic wizardry. Their focus is ecosystem-building with tai’shin…” Zee gestured awkwardly, finding it difficult to explain the concept, “erm…one may translate it as ‘Forgotten Vegetables’.” She sketched the quotation marks. “It refers to strains of plants that are fairly obscure, either because they’re grown only in one village on a nameless Outer Rim planet, or because of marketing issues. For instance…” She scratched her chin. “The planet H'nemthe actually has several thousand distinct varieties of yams, but only one is known as ‘H'nemthe yams’. It would be confusing for the average galactic consumer to have to pick between countless colors and shapes, wouldn’t it? So the inhabitants of Gall grow small quantities of various crops that are notoriously difficult to market. Amusingly, they export to high-class gourmet establishments as well as soup kitchens that can’t afford to care about named vegetables.”
Zee smiled. On the board, some of the holochess pieces had gotten bored. The Master of Blades and the Master of Shadows had started sparring, longsword versus twin needle-thin knives, none of them stepping beyond the edge of their squares, none of them landing a hit.
“Which, I expect, is exactly the reason why the Jedi started negotiations here.” She nodded to herself. Not all that she’d said had been mentioned in the mission info, but when it came to things that caught her attention, Zee would research the heck out of them. “The inhabitants of Gall who actually bother with exporting their produce are organized in cooperatives, and often their export lists contain thousands of species with less than a hundred items each. It is simply impossible to prove that somebody harvested fifty more watermelons than they list on paper. Not even a Hutt accountant would manage it. More importantly, nobody cares. So, if we succeed, food for the Jedi fleet will be hiding behind statistics. In addition,” she raised her index finger, “the canyon and forest biomes are practically impossible to fully image from above. So it's very hard to catch our helpers lying.”
Zee shrugged.
“It’s not a new trick. The Empire used it a millennium ago, to provide food for the builders of the Worst Engineering Design Ever.” She paused. “Also known as the Death Star.” It wasn’t really a joke. “But the really intriguing thing is…”Zee mumbled, gnawing on her lower lip, “that, as I said, they’re not simple farmers. Even the hunter-gatherers who make years-long migrations are often micromanaging their semi-wild crops. They’re ecosystem architects. Yet their message described a wilting disease that managed to turn whole sections of canyon flora to dust. Caused by something they can neither see under the microscope nor genotype, but then, their fastest sequencer is only set for nucleic acid and everyone knows that’s one of the least exotic types of genetic code.”
Zee grinned a bit too widely.
“It sounds fascinating.”
It might be very interesting to note that among the info which Zee’s brain had regarded as too ‘uninteresting’ to remember was the disease that affected humans.
“I don’t think I’ve asked you already, but why did you choose to join this mission?”
Oh course, he’d never existed. The Three Empires never existed. Their Saga was an old Zelosian fiction. Zelosians couldn’t even be sure that they ever had a medieval period, like Alderaan and Naboo. Their planet was secretive about its ruins. But when you’re an entire species without history, you can afford to make your own.
“Fool, coreward.” Zee announced.
The girl’s gigantic index finger patted the miniature Fool on the patched pointed hat, then gestured towards the center of the table. One square. The hologram made an exaggerate bow, comically lost his equilibrium, and tumbled to the assigned space. He dusted himself off with ridiculous care, seemingly trying to amuse the enemy piece in the adjacent square. Zee grinned weakly. Today’s 3-way-Holochess opponents had been tough, especially her fellow Padawan. If Zee hadn’t accidentally knocked over her Courtesan piece (also known as the Lady of Negotiable Affection), she’d have been out of the game long ago. It had seemed a bad move at the time, and the elegant piece – far more exotic than the Queen! – had snapped her little fan at Zee in the heavily polite equivalent of a scowl. Thinking back, this had allowed Zee a narrow escape from having her King captured. The girl was good with maths (as proven by how she’d calculated their hyperspace directions on a piece of paper, which, given her usual clumsiness, may not have been reassuring for the passengers). But Holochess required an amount of mental multitasking that left Zee’s brain stumbling.
She turned back to look at the screen, then stretched and massaged her neck.
“We’re fairly close to the Gall system.” As expected, a Givin ship would plow through hyperspace like a knife through butter. “Could we discuss the issues and our aims once more…uh, please? I tend to forget uninteresting things.” Zee said. Her eyes, rather than staring at the human Knight or Nautolan Padawan, burned through the Holochess table. She’d been told that one of them is a healer and the other had survived Naboo, which probably said as much about surviving abilities as swimming in space without a costume.
“First, the interesting things. Gall is not an agriworld, but rather a wild garden-world. You will never see genetically identical crops stretching on degrees latitude. It’s a world of gigantic canyons and forests, shaped by rivers past and present. Its people are specialists in canyon- and layered-forest agriculture. And these are not simple.” Zee’s appreciative grin underlined her intense tone. “Every square meter in a canyon” she explained, slowly sketching a U-shaped canyon with her index finger, “receives different sunlight, wind, maybe even nutrients, compared to even nearby patches. Notwithstanding the varied light spectra it had due to Gall orbiting a gas giant. In a forest,” she continued, placing her palms one over the other in the shape of shelves, “one can grow a stunning variety of trees and lianas by taking advantage of layers of shadow and patches of light. The keyword in both cases is ‘variety’.”
“Unlike the M’shin for example, Gall people are not primarily interested in plant genetic wizardry. Their focus is ecosystem-building with tai’shin…” Zee gestured awkwardly, finding it difficult to explain the concept, “erm…one may translate it as ‘Forgotten Vegetables’.” She sketched the quotation marks. “It refers to strains of plants that are fairly obscure, either because they’re grown only in one village on a nameless Outer Rim planet, or because of marketing issues. For instance…” She scratched her chin. “The planet H'nemthe actually has several thousand distinct varieties of yams, but only one is known as ‘H'nemthe yams’. It would be confusing for the average galactic consumer to have to pick between countless colors and shapes, wouldn’t it? So the inhabitants of Gall grow small quantities of various crops that are notoriously difficult to market. Amusingly, they export to high-class gourmet establishments as well as soup kitchens that can’t afford to care about named vegetables.”
Zee smiled. On the board, some of the holochess pieces had gotten bored. The Master of Blades and the Master of Shadows had started sparring, longsword versus twin needle-thin knives, none of them stepping beyond the edge of their squares, none of them landing a hit.
“Which, I expect, is exactly the reason why the Jedi started negotiations here.” She nodded to herself. Not all that she’d said had been mentioned in the mission info, but when it came to things that caught her attention, Zee would research the heck out of them. “The inhabitants of Gall who actually bother with exporting their produce are organized in cooperatives, and often their export lists contain thousands of species with less than a hundred items each. It is simply impossible to prove that somebody harvested fifty more watermelons than they list on paper. Not even a Hutt accountant would manage it. More importantly, nobody cares. So, if we succeed, food for the Jedi fleet will be hiding behind statistics. In addition,” she raised her index finger, “the canyon and forest biomes are practically impossible to fully image from above. So it's very hard to catch our helpers lying.”
Zee shrugged.
“It’s not a new trick. The Empire used it a millennium ago, to provide food for the builders of the Worst Engineering Design Ever.” She paused. “Also known as the Death Star.” It wasn’t really a joke. “But the really intriguing thing is…”Zee mumbled, gnawing on her lower lip, “that, as I said, they’re not simple farmers. Even the hunter-gatherers who make years-long migrations are often micromanaging their semi-wild crops. They’re ecosystem architects. Yet their message described a wilting disease that managed to turn whole sections of canyon flora to dust. Caused by something they can neither see under the microscope nor genotype, but then, their fastest sequencer is only set for nucleic acid and everyone knows that’s one of the least exotic types of genetic code.”
Zee grinned a bit too widely.
“It sounds fascinating.”
It might be very interesting to note that among the info which Zee’s brain had regarded as too ‘uninteresting’ to remember was the disease that affected humans.
“I don’t think I’ve asked you already, but why did you choose to join this mission?”
