Disclaimer: The universe in which this story was conceived (good
word for it, huh?), and the characters of Anakin and Shmi belong
to George Lucas. Any good ideas floating around in my head are
no doubt copied from someone else who is much more creative
than I and much better at telling stories and making them
interesting (not Threepio, obviously), but I think this particular
story is pretty original to me. Any knowledge I may exhibit on
DNA or genetics was no doubt forced upon me by my Biology
teacher, Mr. Engelman (thanks). Skieve and Ben Skywalker are
my original creations. Please keep my name and email address and
at least some of my disclaimers on this wherever it goes. I guess
that about covers it.
Other Stuff: This is definitely what I would call a "what if" kind of
story, of sorts, so don't take it too seriously. I'm afraid it may
create more questions than it answers, but if anyone cares to ask
I'll be glad to explain all I'm able to. I love writing email. And
so, without further adieu...
The Chosen One
By Jjanda Solo
perfect3solo@yahoo.com
Look into my ice-blue eyes,
The past and future all are lies,
The present nothing but surprise, and
Don't you understand?
-Skieve Skywalker
Skieve Skywalker was somewhere between earth and sky,
somewhere between past and present, somewhere between life and
death, and somewhere between reality and fantasy. But he was a
Jedi Master. He had been dead for a thousand generations, but his
name had lived on.
Until recently.
Things had happened, many of them not good things, until the
name of Skywalker had almost died entirely. But it was not gone
completely, not quite. There remained one with that name. A
slave on a planet that none would look twice at unless they were
absolutely desperate, and a female at that.
But none of that really mattered, except to reaffirm what he had to
do. He would not let his name die.
"Is she Force sensitive?" asked another voice nearby. Or perhaps
he did not speak. Perhaps the words were transmitted through the
Force. Skieve could not honestly remember which method it was
they employed, and it mattered little.
"No, she is not, Ben," Skieve answered.
Ben sighed. Or was it only the mental equivalent of a sigh? "What
is it you propose to do, again?" he asked wearily. Skywalker was
his name as well. He had been an ancestor, in fact, of Skieve's, but
he did not see why they had to go to such lengths. The impossible
was commonplace for Jedi, but the extra-impossible?
"Restore my name and my power to the dying realm of Jedi,"
Skieve returned tightly, his voice both eerie and regal at once.
"You know fully well they will not survive as they are. None of
them will be able to withstand Sidious and..." he trailed off.
"And her son," Ben completed the sentence. To the living Jedi the
future was always in motion, but to them it was often clear and still
as a lake of crystal, and so it was now. The future was changeable
as far as whether or not the child would be born, but once that
factor was decided, all things were set and ready for destiny to
unfold in a singularly predictable and pre-decided manner.
"Yes," Skieve admitted softly. "That I know as well as you. But
her grandson, and granddaughter for that matter, will restore order
to the galaxy. And restore balance to the Force."
"But back to the original question," Ben returned. "What I meant
was, 'How do you propose to do this?'"
Skieve looked down, unto the surface of the desert planet below
them, or was it merely beside them? The buildings were solid, but
through the eyes of the Force they were nothing more than
transparent. He searched until he found what he was looking for.
It was night there, and his eyes in the Force at last rested on a
sleeping woman. "The Force will impregnate her," he said, deadly
serious.
You mean you will, Ben thought, but didn't say. "Who's genes will
you use?" he asked.
Skieve smiled a little mischievously, but the expression was gone
almost before it came. "Mine," he answered, then smiled once
again, or did he merely transfer the thought of a smile? "Her
grandson will look almost exactly like me."
In that case... "Skieve," Ben began gently, "I believe you have
returned to life once or twice before, by different means. You
could live physically for a short time, and..."
"No," the other answered firmly. There would be no argument on
the subject. "I have been faithful to Katanaya for my entire life,
and death, and subsequent lives, and will remain so. And, more
importantly, he may not get trained as a Jedi if... oh." He stopped
and realized the futility and error what he had just been saying. It
was his name and power that they were after, not his training. It
would actually be better for the galaxy at large if he was not
trained, but...
Ben had realized the same thing. "You see," he said. "Everything
would be better that way. Kat would understand, I am sure, and I
believe you would have no trouble seducing her." The Jedi Master
said the word scientifically, with no shame, and Skieve reaffirmed
to himself that that was not something he wanted to do. It was not
Jedi like. Of course, the rules did change when you died, and
changed many times again by the time you'd been dead as long as
Skieve had. But still...
"Still no," Skieve returned, confidently, "and you know it. There
would be no way to be sure that her child would even be Force
sensitive, or male for that matter!"
"Then don't seduce her," Ben returned. Why did he have to keep
using that word? "You could still use artificial means if you wish
to be selective as to..."
This had indeed gone far enough. "In that case there is no
advantage to appearing physically. None. I know what you're
going to say: that there is an advantage because then I'll at least
have the genetic material there to work with. But that's not really
what I want anyway. This kid's going to be powerful. He'll have
to be. Even my genetic material, when paired up with hers, will
not be enough."
It was just beginning to dawn on Ben just how impossible they
were talking about here, and if he'd had a body his mouth would
have dropped open in absolute shock.
Some people think 'impossible' is an absolute term, but Jedi,
especially that have been dead for thousands of years, know better.
To levitate a small rock is impossible, yet many people will find it
believable, given the chance. To levitate an X-Wing is more
impossible, and even half-trained Jedi can have trouble believing
it. To alter things on a planetary level is still more impossible, but
still within the believable realm. Moving a planet is the same as
moving a golf ball, it's just on a larger scale. The most impossible
things truly are not the largest, but rather the smallest. To break
down and rebuild some of the most complex molecules of them all
was perhaps as impossible as you could get.
"So what are you planning to do, exactly?" Ben finally asked.
Skieve's answer confirmed his worst fears, or greatest imaginings.
"I'll 'borrow' one of her own cells, break down, reform, and halve
the DNA from it, add a good number of Midi-Chlorians to it, then
mix it with her half."
Such a thing had never been done before, and the chances were it
would never be done again. Jedi with far more experience and
even far more power than Skieve would never try such a thing.
"Is this really so important to you?" Ben asked, the question
hanging between them in the Force.
"Yes." The single word carried all the power and conviction of the
ancient Jedi's entire existence. "I don't see how you can consider
any other option. Even without Vader to do his hunting, Darth
Sidious will still hunt down and destroy the Jedi. This you know.
The dark side is not more powerful, but for a time it can seem so.
If this woman's grandchildren are not born," he motioned back
down towards the desert hut below, "the Empire will reign for a
thousand generations. Even if there is still a successful rebellion,
without the Jedi it will not survive." He paused, waiting for a
response. There was none. Ben knew too well that he had more to
say.
Skieve started again. "You know very well how difficult it is to
train a Jedi when there are no living Jedi. You also know that it
could be a thousand years before we even find an optional acolyte
for such an experiment. It took you over 200 years to find Kat and
I. And what about the balance of the Force, the balance of the
Masters?"
All true. "You think you are in fact capable of this feat?" Ben
asked. The words whispered on the Force around them, around the
entire universe. They flowed through the desert planet below,
judging once and for all the fate of the name of Skywalker, and the
galaxy in which it existed.
"There is no ignorance, there is knowledge. There is no think,
there is only know or know not. There is no try, there is only do or
do not. I know, and I will do."
"You are the Master," Ben replied, simply stating the facts, "and
from this immaculate conception will come other Masters and part
of a new generation of Jedi Knights. Do."
The first of a thousand generations of galaxy wide Jedi, blonde and
blue eyed in life, looked back again at his descendant, a simple
slave in a simple sandstone hut on a planet never intended to
support her species of life. And, reaching out with the Force, he
began an operation the like of which the galaxy had never seen.
Stealing a single unimportant cell from her body near the point of
conception, Skieve's strong mind carefully unstrung and restrung
the proverbial ladder rungs of adenine, guanine, thymine, and
cytosine, restructuring that single cell's deoxyribonucleic acid, the
genetic map of life. Now that single cell reflected differences from
the DNA her other cells had. It was hers, but was one thousand
generations less diluted, and wanting only the strong Force that
should flow through it. And just a thing or two more.
Skieve now took the newly modified cell, which now held what
had been in life his own genetic code, and began to restructure it,
dividing the genes selectively apart, leaving only the best that
could not be obtained from the unchanged set of genes she would
contribute. He changed the shape of the genetic material's casing
some, until at last it was fully prepared for a conception with only
one parent and yet a whole new and yet old set of genetic
information. A whole new look. Only one thing was now lacking.
The Force.
The genetic material of millennia of great Force users was present,
and yet the Force, though a genetic trait, was not and would never
be a part of one's DNA. Somehow it transcended even that, and
now the realm of the truly impossible would come into play. Till
now he had been modifying what existed, but now he would in
essence create something from nothing.
The long dead Jedi Master began to gather the Force together. It
was a task like trying to gather the waters of the ocean into a
mountain of water and leave the rest of the ocean floor dry:
fundamentally impossible to accomplish, but even getting 0.01%
of the way there would imply an amount of power so monumental
there was nothing that could not be accomplished. A paradox, like
the paradox of creating something from nothing, like the paradox
of joining your genetic material with that of one of your
descendants, like the paradox of an immaculate conception.
The power gathered, threatening to overwhelm the balance of the
cosmos. If Skieve had been a physical entity in a physical
location, the power would have overloaded and destroyed him and
all of his surroundings, but now it could not. If he had been evil he
could have channeled this power into the destruction of whole
worlds and systems, or perhaps all of life in this galaxy, or even
the universe. But such power was never given to evil, and the
power itself, like the Midi-Chlorians in all life, was neither evil nor
good, it just was. It was, and they would be.
At last, having gathered that miniscule but so great percent of the
ocean of the Force together, and concentrated it even more if that
were possible, the Master used a tiny portion of it to create a
focusing lens through which the rest of it poured with all the power
of the ocean pouring through the eye of a needle, coming to rest on
the two cells even now joining together, as if of their own accord.
The energy was like light: pure power effecting everything it
would touch or even come near. As it hit the now single dividing
cell, the process was accelerated, and the absence of any defects
made certain. But that was not its only effect. As it was so
concentrated in a single spot so rich with new life, the pure energy
began to become the most miniscule possible portions of living
matter, creating something from nothing in truth. As they came to
be these too began to divide and multiply, filling all of the new
cells with an increased awareness of life, an increased awareness
of this amazing ocean of power.
At last the deed was accomplished, and the rest of the stream of
power was dissipated back into the rest of the universe, even while
this new life began to create its own small part of this great power.
Across the galaxy, other events began to spiral together into their
sure destiny, like a planet orbiting a black hole, its eventual demise
certain. A certain Jedi's Padawan came to have a greater purpose
he would ever have dreamed of. On the planet of Naboo a very
young girl was being prepared for the throne. On Corellia two
people were predestined to come together and create life again, a
life that would become a part of this new lineage. A girl not to be
born for many years was selected as the personal assistant and
assassin of the one who would become Emperor. With the
conception sure the other events began to lock unchangeably into
place, and time was again an undisturbed and perfectly clear pool,
a tiny piece of the great ocean.
The operation had taken the whole night, and the twin suns were
just beginning to dawn as the dead Jedi quietly withdrew, the deed
done. Skieve Skywalker could feel Ben and all of the others near
him, all approving even while some would never approve, another
paradox. But he had done what destiny demanded, and the balance
of the Force would be restored.
"Our work here is done," Ben said, the words traveling through the
suddenly murky ocean to Skieve's perception.
"I understand," the other answered, agreeing silently as well as
aloud.
"This will bring a lot of pain to their galaxy," Skieve's onetime
teacher added, as if making a last plea, already too late.
"Yes, but it will also bring much redemption, much power, much
joy, and their only chance," Skieve replied, almost reverently.
Though he had done the thing it had been really no more his choice
than anyone else's. He too was only following the dictates of
destiny and the Force.
"Is he the chosen one?" Ben asked, remembering well things they
had engineered in the past.
Skieve did not answer immediately; he knew the other Jedi Master
had all the time and patience in the galaxy. Instead he looked out
over the landscape before him, at the beautiful twin sunrise, and
down at the slave woman in the hut, who was no doubt unaware of
her noble lineage. She was just beginning to stir awake, as yet
unaware of the new life within her. "Yes," he spoke at last, his
words carrying out over the entire desert world before them,
though they only existed in the invisible water of the Force, "I have
chosen him, and he will be the Chosen One."
word for it, huh?), and the characters of Anakin and Shmi belong
to George Lucas. Any good ideas floating around in my head are
no doubt copied from someone else who is much more creative
than I and much better at telling stories and making them
interesting (not Threepio, obviously), but I think this particular
story is pretty original to me. Any knowledge I may exhibit on
DNA or genetics was no doubt forced upon me by my Biology
teacher, Mr. Engelman (thanks). Skieve and Ben Skywalker are
my original creations. Please keep my name and email address and
at least some of my disclaimers on this wherever it goes. I guess
that about covers it.
Other Stuff: This is definitely what I would call a "what if" kind of
story, of sorts, so don't take it too seriously. I'm afraid it may
create more questions than it answers, but if anyone cares to ask
I'll be glad to explain all I'm able to. I love writing email. And
so, without further adieu...
The Chosen One
By Jjanda Solo
perfect3solo@yahoo.com
Look into my ice-blue eyes,
The past and future all are lies,
The present nothing but surprise, and
Don't you understand?
-Skieve Skywalker
Skieve Skywalker was somewhere between earth and sky,
somewhere between past and present, somewhere between life and
death, and somewhere between reality and fantasy. But he was a
Jedi Master. He had been dead for a thousand generations, but his
name had lived on.
Until recently.
Things had happened, many of them not good things, until the
name of Skywalker had almost died entirely. But it was not gone
completely, not quite. There remained one with that name. A
slave on a planet that none would look twice at unless they were
absolutely desperate, and a female at that.
But none of that really mattered, except to reaffirm what he had to
do. He would not let his name die.
"Is she Force sensitive?" asked another voice nearby. Or perhaps
he did not speak. Perhaps the words were transmitted through the
Force. Skieve could not honestly remember which method it was
they employed, and it mattered little.
"No, she is not, Ben," Skieve answered.
Ben sighed. Or was it only the mental equivalent of a sigh? "What
is it you propose to do, again?" he asked wearily. Skywalker was
his name as well. He had been an ancestor, in fact, of Skieve's, but
he did not see why they had to go to such lengths. The impossible
was commonplace for Jedi, but the extra-impossible?
"Restore my name and my power to the dying realm of Jedi,"
Skieve returned tightly, his voice both eerie and regal at once.
"You know fully well they will not survive as they are. None of
them will be able to withstand Sidious and..." he trailed off.
"And her son," Ben completed the sentence. To the living Jedi the
future was always in motion, but to them it was often clear and still
as a lake of crystal, and so it was now. The future was changeable
as far as whether or not the child would be born, but once that
factor was decided, all things were set and ready for destiny to
unfold in a singularly predictable and pre-decided manner.
"Yes," Skieve admitted softly. "That I know as well as you. But
her grandson, and granddaughter for that matter, will restore order
to the galaxy. And restore balance to the Force."
"But back to the original question," Ben returned. "What I meant
was, 'How do you propose to do this?'"
Skieve looked down, unto the surface of the desert planet below
them, or was it merely beside them? The buildings were solid, but
through the eyes of the Force they were nothing more than
transparent. He searched until he found what he was looking for.
It was night there, and his eyes in the Force at last rested on a
sleeping woman. "The Force will impregnate her," he said, deadly
serious.
You mean you will, Ben thought, but didn't say. "Who's genes will
you use?" he asked.
Skieve smiled a little mischievously, but the expression was gone
almost before it came. "Mine," he answered, then smiled once
again, or did he merely transfer the thought of a smile? "Her
grandson will look almost exactly like me."
In that case... "Skieve," Ben began gently, "I believe you have
returned to life once or twice before, by different means. You
could live physically for a short time, and..."
"No," the other answered firmly. There would be no argument on
the subject. "I have been faithful to Katanaya for my entire life,
and death, and subsequent lives, and will remain so. And, more
importantly, he may not get trained as a Jedi if... oh." He stopped
and realized the futility and error what he had just been saying. It
was his name and power that they were after, not his training. It
would actually be better for the galaxy at large if he was not
trained, but...
Ben had realized the same thing. "You see," he said. "Everything
would be better that way. Kat would understand, I am sure, and I
believe you would have no trouble seducing her." The Jedi Master
said the word scientifically, with no shame, and Skieve reaffirmed
to himself that that was not something he wanted to do. It was not
Jedi like. Of course, the rules did change when you died, and
changed many times again by the time you'd been dead as long as
Skieve had. But still...
"Still no," Skieve returned, confidently, "and you know it. There
would be no way to be sure that her child would even be Force
sensitive, or male for that matter!"
"Then don't seduce her," Ben returned. Why did he have to keep
using that word? "You could still use artificial means if you wish
to be selective as to..."
This had indeed gone far enough. "In that case there is no
advantage to appearing physically. None. I know what you're
going to say: that there is an advantage because then I'll at least
have the genetic material there to work with. But that's not really
what I want anyway. This kid's going to be powerful. He'll have
to be. Even my genetic material, when paired up with hers, will
not be enough."
It was just beginning to dawn on Ben just how impossible they
were talking about here, and if he'd had a body his mouth would
have dropped open in absolute shock.
Some people think 'impossible' is an absolute term, but Jedi,
especially that have been dead for thousands of years, know better.
To levitate a small rock is impossible, yet many people will find it
believable, given the chance. To levitate an X-Wing is more
impossible, and even half-trained Jedi can have trouble believing
it. To alter things on a planetary level is still more impossible, but
still within the believable realm. Moving a planet is the same as
moving a golf ball, it's just on a larger scale. The most impossible
things truly are not the largest, but rather the smallest. To break
down and rebuild some of the most complex molecules of them all
was perhaps as impossible as you could get.
"So what are you planning to do, exactly?" Ben finally asked.
Skieve's answer confirmed his worst fears, or greatest imaginings.
"I'll 'borrow' one of her own cells, break down, reform, and halve
the DNA from it, add a good number of Midi-Chlorians to it, then
mix it with her half."
Such a thing had never been done before, and the chances were it
would never be done again. Jedi with far more experience and
even far more power than Skieve would never try such a thing.
"Is this really so important to you?" Ben asked, the question
hanging between them in the Force.
"Yes." The single word carried all the power and conviction of the
ancient Jedi's entire existence. "I don't see how you can consider
any other option. Even without Vader to do his hunting, Darth
Sidious will still hunt down and destroy the Jedi. This you know.
The dark side is not more powerful, but for a time it can seem so.
If this woman's grandchildren are not born," he motioned back
down towards the desert hut below, "the Empire will reign for a
thousand generations. Even if there is still a successful rebellion,
without the Jedi it will not survive." He paused, waiting for a
response. There was none. Ben knew too well that he had more to
say.
Skieve started again. "You know very well how difficult it is to
train a Jedi when there are no living Jedi. You also know that it
could be a thousand years before we even find an optional acolyte
for such an experiment. It took you over 200 years to find Kat and
I. And what about the balance of the Force, the balance of the
Masters?"
All true. "You think you are in fact capable of this feat?" Ben
asked. The words whispered on the Force around them, around the
entire universe. They flowed through the desert planet below,
judging once and for all the fate of the name of Skywalker, and the
galaxy in which it existed.
"There is no ignorance, there is knowledge. There is no think,
there is only know or know not. There is no try, there is only do or
do not. I know, and I will do."
"You are the Master," Ben replied, simply stating the facts, "and
from this immaculate conception will come other Masters and part
of a new generation of Jedi Knights. Do."
The first of a thousand generations of galaxy wide Jedi, blonde and
blue eyed in life, looked back again at his descendant, a simple
slave in a simple sandstone hut on a planet never intended to
support her species of life. And, reaching out with the Force, he
began an operation the like of which the galaxy had never seen.
Stealing a single unimportant cell from her body near the point of
conception, Skieve's strong mind carefully unstrung and restrung
the proverbial ladder rungs of adenine, guanine, thymine, and
cytosine, restructuring that single cell's deoxyribonucleic acid, the
genetic map of life. Now that single cell reflected differences from
the DNA her other cells had. It was hers, but was one thousand
generations less diluted, and wanting only the strong Force that
should flow through it. And just a thing or two more.
Skieve now took the newly modified cell, which now held what
had been in life his own genetic code, and began to restructure it,
dividing the genes selectively apart, leaving only the best that
could not be obtained from the unchanged set of genes she would
contribute. He changed the shape of the genetic material's casing
some, until at last it was fully prepared for a conception with only
one parent and yet a whole new and yet old set of genetic
information. A whole new look. Only one thing was now lacking.
The Force.
The genetic material of millennia of great Force users was present,
and yet the Force, though a genetic trait, was not and would never
be a part of one's DNA. Somehow it transcended even that, and
now the realm of the truly impossible would come into play. Till
now he had been modifying what existed, but now he would in
essence create something from nothing.
The long dead Jedi Master began to gather the Force together. It
was a task like trying to gather the waters of the ocean into a
mountain of water and leave the rest of the ocean floor dry:
fundamentally impossible to accomplish, but even getting 0.01%
of the way there would imply an amount of power so monumental
there was nothing that could not be accomplished. A paradox, like
the paradox of creating something from nothing, like the paradox
of joining your genetic material with that of one of your
descendants, like the paradox of an immaculate conception.
The power gathered, threatening to overwhelm the balance of the
cosmos. If Skieve had been a physical entity in a physical
location, the power would have overloaded and destroyed him and
all of his surroundings, but now it could not. If he had been evil he
could have channeled this power into the destruction of whole
worlds and systems, or perhaps all of life in this galaxy, or even
the universe. But such power was never given to evil, and the
power itself, like the Midi-Chlorians in all life, was neither evil nor
good, it just was. It was, and they would be.
At last, having gathered that miniscule but so great percent of the
ocean of the Force together, and concentrated it even more if that
were possible, the Master used a tiny portion of it to create a
focusing lens through which the rest of it poured with all the power
of the ocean pouring through the eye of a needle, coming to rest on
the two cells even now joining together, as if of their own accord.
The energy was like light: pure power effecting everything it
would touch or even come near. As it hit the now single dividing
cell, the process was accelerated, and the absence of any defects
made certain. But that was not its only effect. As it was so
concentrated in a single spot so rich with new life, the pure energy
began to become the most miniscule possible portions of living
matter, creating something from nothing in truth. As they came to
be these too began to divide and multiply, filling all of the new
cells with an increased awareness of life, an increased awareness
of this amazing ocean of power.
At last the deed was accomplished, and the rest of the stream of
power was dissipated back into the rest of the universe, even while
this new life began to create its own small part of this great power.
Across the galaxy, other events began to spiral together into their
sure destiny, like a planet orbiting a black hole, its eventual demise
certain. A certain Jedi's Padawan came to have a greater purpose
he would ever have dreamed of. On the planet of Naboo a very
young girl was being prepared for the throne. On Corellia two
people were predestined to come together and create life again, a
life that would become a part of this new lineage. A girl not to be
born for many years was selected as the personal assistant and
assassin of the one who would become Emperor. With the
conception sure the other events began to lock unchangeably into
place, and time was again an undisturbed and perfectly clear pool,
a tiny piece of the great ocean.
The operation had taken the whole night, and the twin suns were
just beginning to dawn as the dead Jedi quietly withdrew, the deed
done. Skieve Skywalker could feel Ben and all of the others near
him, all approving even while some would never approve, another
paradox. But he had done what destiny demanded, and the balance
of the Force would be restored.
"Our work here is done," Ben said, the words traveling through the
suddenly murky ocean to Skieve's perception.
"I understand," the other answered, agreeing silently as well as
aloud.
"This will bring a lot of pain to their galaxy," Skieve's onetime
teacher added, as if making a last plea, already too late.
"Yes, but it will also bring much redemption, much power, much
joy, and their only chance," Skieve replied, almost reverently.
Though he had done the thing it had been really no more his choice
than anyone else's. He too was only following the dictates of
destiny and the Force.
"Is he the chosen one?" Ben asked, remembering well things they
had engineered in the past.
Skieve did not answer immediately; he knew the other Jedi Master
had all the time and patience in the galaxy. Instead he looked out
over the landscape before him, at the beautiful twin sunrise, and
down at the slave woman in the hut, who was no doubt unaware of
her noble lineage. She was just beginning to stir awake, as yet
unaware of the new life within her. "Yes," he spoke at last, his
words carrying out over the entire desert world before them,
though they only existed in the invisible water of the Force, "I have
chosen him, and he will be the Chosen One."