It was morning, and it came too soon.

Senior Planter Kenobi didn't generally harbour ill will towards this particular time of day, but after the madness he had been recently subjected to, he'd have really appreciated if it didn't have to be so – so – punctual. He punched the face of alarm clock – he'd got it for his last birthday and usually treated with as much respect as he could, and punched when he couldn't.

Because not only it was morning, it was his.

(Here we better leave Kenobi for some time to make himself presentable, and read up on AgriCorps Slang. It is vast, verbal and non-verbal, evolving, and beautifully simple.

For example, since growing a plant is in itself an itinerant process, and growing several thousand various plants is several thousand times more so, every hour in a day is scientifically picked, weighted, and accounted for. So every second Planter has to check the sprinklers, drippos (also used for watering), and many other automats which don't get any sleep (come on, Kenobi, be a man, you have only been doing it for the last twelve years, what's one more day?), but have to operate anyway, twice in 24 hours.

Therefore, in the morning you morn, and in the evening you even. It leaves the daytime free for actual work, which can't be pre-scheduled.

And a night is, of course, strictly optional.

But look! He has finally found it in himself to get up!)

'Aaah,' was the first thought our hero had after righting his undying timepiece and stretching and squeezing and buttoning himself into his combo. 'What a mess.'

Thinking so clearly and succinctly can only be achieved through years of toiling at a F-Fac (another colloquialism; "Farm-Factory" is the usual regional unit of the AC in this Sector), where only a year truly ends (and begins). Obi-Wan remembered everything that happened the day before as clearly as if it happened the day before, which it probably did…

After depositing the boy at the Custodian's and explaining to him, with some bewilderment, that there wasn't anything Associative, planetary, and indeed cosmic about the office*, he towed the vehicle, which he suspected was held in one piece by Force alone, to the "Like-New" Repair Shop**, had his brain washed by the HM and pecked at by Chen-Ko, and finally, finally came back to the Greenery – er, hothouse 5.

The Muja plantlet he treated earlier waved at him a new leaf, a shade lighter than others, and smiled. Sure, Obi-Wan knew it couldn't smile with lips or teeth or anything a sentient creature would have used***, but it tried its best. We have had good nourishment, haven't we, he whispered lovingly. It is so much simpler with Mujas; nobody criticizes your choice of words, only your intent matters.

Someone coughed behind him in a way a perfectly healthy person coughs when in actuality all they should have done was to keep a straight face and do nothing.

Obi-Wan whirled around, reddening despite his Jedyism, and saw nobody. Strangely, it didn't feel reassuring.

'Obi-Wan', said the nobody who must have coughed so offensively in a voice that was somewhat familiar, but not quite, 'listen. The boy must be taught –'

'Uh-huh,' agreed he, and nodded. This wasn't happening. He couldn't have given himself a heatstroke by riding a speeder for several hours in the blazing sun – surely he'd drop dead already; nor could he meditate himself into some dreamlike state like some Corellians used to – he hadn't touched Drasa's Secret Garden since being dared and drugged and very naïve; so why, oh why was he hallucinating?

'It is important!' hissed nobody. 'He is the Chosen One – okay, okay, just a minute, I've got to get to him, wait –'

And then there was silence.

Senior Planter Kenobi backed out of the hothouse 5, sweat beading on his brow, and kept backing away until he bumped into hothouse 6.

Because in the silence that had cut his hallucination so abruptly he couldn't help discerning a metallic scratching, almost too soft to be heard.

It was the sound of static, as impersonal and irritating as any static disrupting an important communication.

In the present time****, he had to morn, and morn he did. It relaxed the mind, feeding it nice, neat routine bit by invariable bit. He whistled merrily, tickling the rootlets of germinating Squishies (he knew vaguely they made a delicate dessert, a pinnacle of Alderaanian cooking, but for him they were his little greenies), and only felt his good mood evaporate and a roaring bad humour precipitate in its stead when he met The Boy.

He had already learned Skywalker's history of abuse, slavery and aborted studentship. Unfortunately, he couldn't bring himself to pity or at least to feel for him, for in the same while he had learned about Qui-Gon's death.

In the end, he believed neither.

It was so much easier to pretend that a great Jedy Knight Qui-Gon Jinn was roaming the depth of the Galaxy, seeking justice and finding adventure, laughing, fighting, getting wiser and odder by a light-year. Who was this nine-year-old sulking boasting child (a word never applicable to a Jedy, even if they haven't completed their training) to tell him that Qui-Gon was defeated?

He knew, though, in his heart of hearts he knew he believed. No force but the Force could have led to Qui-Gon's demise, and haven't the Force already denied Obi-Wan the honour of being the man's Padawan?

Planter Kenobi inclined his head in greeting, a bit stiffly from lack of sleep.

'Hi,' said Skywalker. He stared at a drippo (basically, at a long plastic tube running over a row of Squishies with tiny holes placed strategically between plants) with such hungry eyes that Kenobi's right hand jerked to pull him aside.

'Watering system,' he pointed out, glad of mastering himself.

'Wizard.'

'Quite advanced, yes.'

There was a pause, not a natural peaceful one, but taught and brittle. Kenobi thought he heard something that he shouldn't have, a tinny echo of –

'I can show you around, if you'd like.'

'Cool!'

'The sprinkling machines, the pool –'

Here the boy's eyes grew as round as any Calamarian's.

'The pool? Like, there's water in it?'

'Oh no, no. Never that corroding stuff. Liquid Fertilizer only.'

'Gah!'

He bit his lips – to smile would have been impolite – and led the way outside, where the sun has already added colour to landscape, and the grass the sound to the wind.

* In response to which Anakin only shrugged; a decade later Obi-Wan Kenobi would have translated the shrug as "stranger things had been faced and dealt with", but as of then he was still young and inexperienced.

** Mostly referred to as "Only-Not".

*** Obi-Wan's broad-mindedness was based on the assumption that if one didn't recognize a move as a possible assault, they should respond with friendliness. He had only been sadly mistaken three times, and after the third one learned to leave Drasa to sulk to her heart's content, though he never understood what kept coming over the girl with such astonishing regularity every Standard month.

**** But still long ago, remember?