Zee
SWRP Writer
- Joined
- May 21, 2015
- Messages
- 78
- Reaction score
- 9
Following the unexpected announcements of the Jedi Order, Zee had spent five days alone, seething with the sort of pent-up emotions that were best expressed by teenagers in dark clothes slamming doors, shouting at you that you don’t understand (a typical image of a Sith Acolyte). Close enough. The world had gone mad and she lost the grasp on the little she thought she understood about it.
One should have a cynical view on these things.
Because she was a Jedi, that meant she’d spent a lot of time in the darkness, shuddering. You see, some bits of her subconscious waged an eons-old war against sensitive electronics, particularly indoor illumination. To glitch circuits had become a reflex of fright. She feared darkness. Therefore, it must have been psychological. But Zee, the insightful mathematician, couldn’t see that far into herself as she curled up under the blanket and shivered herself to sleep in the sounds of the bell chimes, cat-skin drums and the shuffling steps, the feather steps, the rippling and the fluttering of a parade of 100 demons going past her bedroom door. Very certain about numbers, mathematician people. It was something more than a child’s imagination; it was less than a mental disorder. It was the Force running haywire through a brain which had never made a clear distinction between story and reality.
The Force had made Zee uncannily good at avoiding danger. Her unconscious mind said ‘blast this, I ain’t evolved for that’, and build her own monsters.
Was she a Jedi, anyway? The announcement of the Order taking a more militarized role in the war had hit her straight between the temples. It shouldn’t have. It simply meant the Jedi were no longer a shield for Zee, and that she should fade out. Perhaps go to university. It was the details which shook her brain. Larik Novan, the man who’d showed her the whole Galaxy through the Force, had disappeared. Kai Sera, the one who’d supported her through coming to terms with her Force-sensitivity, was patted on the head for blowing up a Sith Temple, or so the rumors said. Zee was too confused to care about the truth. All she knew was that war was dangerous and boring, and that she needed some time alone.
So she simply got in her ship and left the Galaxy.
There was one place where nobody would find her, Zee thought. Somewhere that no one would think anyone idiot enough to visit.
Coruscant.
An almost-Jedi would have to be a complete moron to go there in the given circumstances. Which is exactly why no one would be looking for her. However, she had to act smart, and not announce the Hexacontagon’s presence on every radar, harmless-looking yacht or not. Yet that was difficult. It was impossible to travel to Core Worlds without multiple hyperspace jumps, due to the high density of stars. It made calculations difficult.
But what people often forgot was that mathematics weren’t just about finding answers, they were about finding the optimal path to an answer. You simply had to…tweak your perspective.
Imagine: the galaxy isn’t flat. Give it a spin.
People didn’t like to leave the ol’ galactic plane. Holonet waves didn’t reach much outside the spiral. If something broke down there, you were on your own. Alone. You died. With no one to hear you scream or whimper, by case. Not even a star in sight. Yes, the lack of significant gravitational sources made it easier to calculate hyperspace jumps, but the up-down detours made it not worth it. It took a special kind of mind to take the risk.
It took a special kind of mind to wait two day’s worth of computer time for the hyperspace coordinates of a one-day journey. And that was only part of the way. Can you conceive it? Normally, a hyperspace jump is executed in seconds, minutes.
With the computing power a two-day hyperspace run, Zee could hopefully materialize close enough to the planet to bypass most sensors. Let’s give you a term of comparison here. With the computing power a two-day hyperspace run, Zee could have calculated the trajectory of matter in a solar system down to pebble size. She could have calculated how to change the trajectories of, let’s say, a thousand of pebble-sized asteroids, in order to destroy an average-sized city after, let’s say, a month. Atmospheric shields were programmed to repel particles above a certain radius; they could do very little against a most improbable death by a thousand simultaneous cuts.
Zee was coming to realize that she could do things, frightening things, indifferent of how awful she was with the Force. For one reason or another, meeting Larik had given her the courage to try.
Zee Irving had decided that she wanted to make worlds.
Terraforming was a lost craft. For long, it had been far easier to steal a life-supporting (whatever that meant for your species) planet from those shameless neighbors who played music too loud, than to make your own.
What this meant was a string of dead planets. Alderaan, Honoghr. Coruscant. The planet-city of the brilliant corusca gem. Now a piece of trash.
Having landed (‘controllably crashed’) in what used to be a parking-space, as revealed by the half-molten speeders cracking like popcorn under the hull, Zee rectified that last comment. Coruscant was a treasure chest. But most people couldn’t see the treasure. No, it wasn’t the holocrons, the artifacts, the jewels, the metals, the still-functioning electronics.
The treasure was plants and mold. From the surface of a dead world, you could find the germs for a new one.
Zee stepped away from her ship to the edge of the platform, glancing at the ruined towers multiplying in vertical infinites. The destruction made them look bitten. Half of the floor-space was missing, which made the place even more of a labyrinth. The eye lost itself in scorched blacks, metallic sheens and dusty gray. The girl arranged her backpack on her left shoulder, and her skimboard on the right. She made sure her breathing mask was correctly fitted. All sorts of toxins could spread...
Whenever she found an interesting fungus, lichen, wall-alga, among the decay, Zee smiled, knelt down, or reached out, and collected it in special stamp-sized self-sealing sample envelopes.
One should have a cynical view on these things.
Because she was a Jedi, that meant she’d spent a lot of time in the darkness, shuddering. You see, some bits of her subconscious waged an eons-old war against sensitive electronics, particularly indoor illumination. To glitch circuits had become a reflex of fright. She feared darkness. Therefore, it must have been psychological. But Zee, the insightful mathematician, couldn’t see that far into herself as she curled up under the blanket and shivered herself to sleep in the sounds of the bell chimes, cat-skin drums and the shuffling steps, the feather steps, the rippling and the fluttering of a parade of 100 demons going past her bedroom door. Very certain about numbers, mathematician people. It was something more than a child’s imagination; it was less than a mental disorder. It was the Force running haywire through a brain which had never made a clear distinction between story and reality.
The Force had made Zee uncannily good at avoiding danger. Her unconscious mind said ‘blast this, I ain’t evolved for that’, and build her own monsters.
Was she a Jedi, anyway? The announcement of the Order taking a more militarized role in the war had hit her straight between the temples. It shouldn’t have. It simply meant the Jedi were no longer a shield for Zee, and that she should fade out. Perhaps go to university. It was the details which shook her brain. Larik Novan, the man who’d showed her the whole Galaxy through the Force, had disappeared. Kai Sera, the one who’d supported her through coming to terms with her Force-sensitivity, was patted on the head for blowing up a Sith Temple, or so the rumors said. Zee was too confused to care about the truth. All she knew was that war was dangerous and boring, and that she needed some time alone.
So she simply got in her ship and left the Galaxy.
There was one place where nobody would find her, Zee thought. Somewhere that no one would think anyone idiot enough to visit.
Coruscant.
An almost-Jedi would have to be a complete moron to go there in the given circumstances. Which is exactly why no one would be looking for her. However, she had to act smart, and not announce the Hexacontagon’s presence on every radar, harmless-looking yacht or not. Yet that was difficult. It was impossible to travel to Core Worlds without multiple hyperspace jumps, due to the high density of stars. It made calculations difficult.
But what people often forgot was that mathematics weren’t just about finding answers, they were about finding the optimal path to an answer. You simply had to…tweak your perspective.
Imagine: the galaxy isn’t flat. Give it a spin.
People didn’t like to leave the ol’ galactic plane. Holonet waves didn’t reach much outside the spiral. If something broke down there, you were on your own. Alone. You died. With no one to hear you scream or whimper, by case. Not even a star in sight. Yes, the lack of significant gravitational sources made it easier to calculate hyperspace jumps, but the up-down detours made it not worth it. It took a special kind of mind to take the risk.
It took a special kind of mind to wait two day’s worth of computer time for the hyperspace coordinates of a one-day journey. And that was only part of the way. Can you conceive it? Normally, a hyperspace jump is executed in seconds, minutes.
With the computing power a two-day hyperspace run, Zee could hopefully materialize close enough to the planet to bypass most sensors. Let’s give you a term of comparison here. With the computing power a two-day hyperspace run, Zee could have calculated the trajectory of matter in a solar system down to pebble size. She could have calculated how to change the trajectories of, let’s say, a thousand of pebble-sized asteroids, in order to destroy an average-sized city after, let’s say, a month. Atmospheric shields were programmed to repel particles above a certain radius; they could do very little against a most improbable death by a thousand simultaneous cuts.
Zee was coming to realize that she could do things, frightening things, indifferent of how awful she was with the Force. For one reason or another, meeting Larik had given her the courage to try.
Zee Irving had decided that she wanted to make worlds.
Terraforming was a lost craft. For long, it had been far easier to steal a life-supporting (whatever that meant for your species) planet from those shameless neighbors who played music too loud, than to make your own.
What this meant was a string of dead planets. Alderaan, Honoghr. Coruscant. The planet-city of the brilliant corusca gem. Now a piece of trash.
Having landed (‘controllably crashed’) in what used to be a parking-space, as revealed by the half-molten speeders cracking like popcorn under the hull, Zee rectified that last comment. Coruscant was a treasure chest. But most people couldn’t see the treasure. No, it wasn’t the holocrons, the artifacts, the jewels, the metals, the still-functioning electronics.
The treasure was plants and mold. From the surface of a dead world, you could find the germs for a new one.
Zee stepped away from her ship to the edge of the platform, glancing at the ruined towers multiplying in vertical infinites. The destruction made them look bitten. Half of the floor-space was missing, which made the place even more of a labyrinth. The eye lost itself in scorched blacks, metallic sheens and dusty gray. The girl arranged her backpack on her left shoulder, and her skimboard on the right. She made sure her breathing mask was correctly fitted. All sorts of toxins could spread...
Whenever she found an interesting fungus, lichen, wall-alga, among the decay, Zee smiled, knelt down, or reached out, and collected it in special stamp-sized self-sealing sample envelopes.
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