Legacy VI


Chapter 8: Change of Pace

Leisure was a thing elusive, a guest which came to stay unannounced and might be expected to leave a precipitously as it had arrived, an indulgence so rare that it prickled the fine hairs of conscience. Or at least, so any Temple-bred Jedi would tell you. Anakin had been resident in that elite and esoteric community for a full six months, and he could confirm the sentiment. Free time was as foreign to the Order's sensibilities as it was to those of a slave; we come to serve was more than a mere mantra, an empty platitude. The very warp and weft of Temple life was strung upon the frame of duty and diligence, perhaps – he dared to think- to the breaking point, a delicate tension that kept his Jedi peers and elders balanced upon the razor edge between near-impossible excellence and nervous breakdown.

Take Master Obi-Wan, for example. What sane person would spend his precious free time – a day, days, almost three days now of unmitigated leisure – upon a project so tedious and dry as the composition of a monograph upon the historical Teth Conflicts? The man only took breaks to eat and to expend tightly bottled energy upon saber play for an hour or two before returning to the grind. It was weird, weirder than all the Jedi koans and rules and unspoken conventions and habits and the rest of it rolled into one. You could feel his enjoyment of the task clearly, too – like a sharp wind coming off the dunes in winter, edged and clean, no grit in its piercing howl, no guttering and twisting currents whipping up dustdevils along the city's outskirts. That was even weirder. Anakin's brief experience of school had left him unimpressed, and certainly not inclined to squander his own leisure upon anything resembling scholastic endeavor.

Still, he was in a mood to be tolerant of his mentor's eccentricities, since it afforded him uninterrupted opportunity to work on his own pet project. He had promptly – upon taking possession of the deconstructed droid – converted his small bedchamber to a workshop, pragmatically transferring his sleep-mattress to the balcony where he could lie at night in the warm summer air, watching Coruscant's night traffic flit by and pretending that the Temple was a mighty starship and he a sojourner bound for the stars.

After all, that's what he would be in truth and fact, the moment orders came through. The excitement was enough to make him burst, so it was a good thing he had his protocol unit to worry about.

Upon dismantling the head, he had discovered that the central processor, although intact, had overloaded and performed a self-purge. This was a protective mechanism built in to preserve the hardware should any stress-inducing trauma occur which might otherwise introduce fatal glitches in the AI matrix. In laymen's terms, any properly mannufactured droid would suffer total amnesia in lieu of the cybernetic equivalent of a psychotic break. Galactic law dictated that all droids conform to a prime imperative of no harm to sentients,and obviously a severely maladaptive processor couldn't be trusted not to veer off the strictly straight and narrow path…. Anakin had heard rumor of older models - the sort of hyper-expensive personal servants purchased by fabulously powerful aristocrats on far-flung systems- droids which had gone off the deep end before the safety protocols had been introduced by later programmers and taken up a life of maverick crime as hired mercenaries. He even thought he'd met a bounty-hunting droid on Tatooine once, but he'd been too intimidated to make a formal introduction. That was back when he was little. He wouldn't be afraid to ask questions now, since he was a Jedi and all.

Anyway, his droid wasn't one of these ruthless scoundrels . It had clearly been quite distressed at the time of its demise, and so had wiped its main memory banks at the crisis moment, just like they said people wet their pants right before they died in a crash or got trampled by bantha or something, out of sheer terror. Which meant that before he could go any further with the reconstruction project, he would need to upload a new core data set. Fortunately, the Temple archives database had over three million forms of recognized sentient communication stored in its depths. Unable to decide which of these languages would be best suited to the future aide-de-camp of a great Jedi Knight, he had opted for the obvious solution: transfer all of them to his new companion. This of course necessitated building a much more extensive memory crystal matrix to accommodate the surfeit, and then rigging some kind of router system to enable the processor core to make the slow encryption remotely, without having to plug the head into the Archives terminals directly. Which meant a bit of creative hacking around the internal comm web…. It was a good thing Master Obi-Wan had opted to turn a deliberately blind eye to his padawan's tinkering – so long as he was quiet and constructively occupied.

At this point – three days in – he had successfully initiated the remote upload. The droid's battered and open-plated head sat amid a cyclonic debris-field of clutter, the whirling "brain" at its heart spinning merrily along as it absorbed millennia worth of accrued knowledge : vocabulary, idiom, pronunciation, grammar, syntax, cultural context, literary tradition – at the relative speed of light. The router display estimated a mere fourteen point five seven solar cycles until completion. Imagine – a whole galaxy's history crammed into a single (admittedly artificial) mind in the course of a fortnight.

There wasn't going to be much room left over in the droid's head for anything else, like common sense, but who cared? It was his, and it was going to be wizard.

"What will you name him?" Master Obi-Wan had inquired, innocently enough.

"Droids get numbers, not names," Anakin had replied, professionally. Everybody knew that. His droid already had a designation, stored somewhere in its labyrinthine operating byways. Once he got it properly booted up and running, it would announce its official numerical appellation. Until then, he merely thought if it as 'the droid.'

The young Jedi lifted one sardonic brow. "If I had a personal idiot savant at my disposal, I should call it Master Numbskull. Or something equally lyrical."

Anakin had scrunched his nose and held his tongue. There was just no figuring Obi-Wan when he was in certain moods.

Like right now, for instance.

"Done," the young Knight announced, issuing forth from his own room in triumphal splendor. Not on the outside, of course, but the Force was shimmering around him like a desert mirage. You could tell he was pleased as punch with something or other. "And how pray tell is Master Numbskull progressing?"

"He's rugged. I have to wait fourteen days for him to upload his new data core, but I can start on his arms and legs and stuff while I'm waiting."

There might have been the hint of a grimace in his companion's smile, but Anakin chose to ignore it.

"Good. Your droid is chewing his proverbial cud, my article has been submitted to the Temple Archives and accepted for publication in the Mid-Rim Journal of Historical Antiquity, to which august periodical Master Li is an avid subscriber, sub rosa – and all is well in the cosmos."

"Okay." So far as the nine year old padawan was concerned, Master-in-a-good-mood was a fair indicator of all well in the universe as any. He shrugged affably.

The droid's brain whirled onward, frenetically diligent.

"How many languages are you shipping onboard?" Obi-Wan asked, eyes narrowing appraisingly at the disembodied head on its shelf.

"Three million." The blond boy's chest puffed out in pride.

Three million. His companion mouthed the words silently, humor softening his hard-lined gaze into a double crescent of amusement. "Do nothing by halves, hm?"

Anakin bounced on the balls of his feet. "Yup. What's the Journal of Whatsit Antiques, anyway?"

"The premier vehicle for dissemination of scholarly research and speculation on galactic pre-expansion period history and archaeology. I happen to have a … contact at the University of Terajon, whence it is published. And I happen to know that the latest issue will be delivered to Master Li's 'pad within the next tenday, replete with a feature piece vindicating Teth Imperial Chronicler Ruus T'chello's accuracy and reliability. The article is an impeccably well-documented, precise, logical, and eloquent exposition by one Professor Dextrus Jetsterossi."

"Huh? Mister Dex writes stuff like that?"

"It is a nom-de-plume, Padawan. The composition is my own, but a Jedi craves not literary accolades."

"But… then how come you would write it at all?"

"The cause of truth must sometimes take precedence over all else."

"Yeah, but… when I wanted to make my point to Ferus Olin, you said peace was more important and I shouldn't pursue it. So shouldn't you just let Master Li think what he likes and keep the peace?"

"There is no true peace under the aegis of ignorance. Hence the words of Master Seva: accord built upon false understanding is a house with a cracked foundation."

"Oh." Anakin scratched his head. "So… I'm right about making Ferus see the truth."

Obi-Wan's arms crossed over his chest. A faint line appeared between his brows. "The two cases are completely different, young one."

"How?"

The line deepened. "Because I am not making my argument by means of fisticuffs."

Unsatisfied, his apprentice stood firm. "Yeah, but you and Master Li enjoy smacking each other around with words even better. So really…."

"So really," the young Jedi interposed, "It would behoove one who does not wish to be implicated in a similar detrimental verbal exchange to desist before his master's patience expires."

"So I should let you win the argument because I'm not as old and wise as you?" Anakin peered up at his mentor, dubiously. "'Cause Master Li is technically older and wiser than you, so…."

Obi-Wan appeared to bite back his next retort. "Why do I have the feeling the Force is mocking me?" he queried, of nobody in particular – or else the universe in general.

"…Master?"

The issue was fated to remain unresolved, for at this very moment the young Knight's commlink chimed, a tiny bell note spreading like a fine ripple in the Force, heralding a summons and a sending forth.

"It's the Council!" Anakin yelped, dancing in place. "We're going on a mission! I knew it!"


It took the Council a choobazzi long time to get around to actually sending them anywhere, in Anakin's considered opinion. The much-anticipated meeting in the serene chamber atop the Temple's southern spire lasted a full two hours, by which time the boy's stomach was growling, his ears were buzzing, and nothing much had been accomplished. He risked a covert upward glance at his imperturbable mentor, only to find with dismay that Obi-Wan gave no indication of noticing the passing time, or the fact that midday meal had come and gone without so much as a tragic fanfare for wasted opportunity.

The older Jedi – a half dozen Councilors and the young Knight – were beating a dead bantha to death. Travel accommodations, hyperspace routes, letters of introduction, something about facsimile identification documents, diplomatic protocols, blah blah blah… the mission wasn't going to amount to much, judging by the tedious details surrounding its inception. He had gathered – before the obscuring fog of combined hunger and ennui had set in – that they were being dispatched to some far-flung sector and that this would involve space travel. This being his principal stake in the matter, he had momentarily tuned out to daydream about his protocol unit and the imaginary starfighter he was building in his head – sort of a podracer on a grand scale. With gold and black stripes.

This had been a mistake, because when his attention wandered back to center, mostly at the behest of a sharp prod between the shoulder blades from Obi-Wan , the discussion had meandered far afield and got itself mired in a bog of minutiae. He smothered a yawn and tried to look the part of a proper Jedi padawan, because he knew Obi-Wan would have his skin if he didn't keep his spine ramrod straight, his hands folded, and his eyes riveted forward-facing.

Master Windu was speaking, hooded eyes glinting with a severely banked fire. "I speak for all the Council, I believe, when I say that we place our trust in your utmost discretion."

Master Obi-Wan's bow was graceful, and laced with irony. "I shall go nowhere, say nothing, and accomplish even less."

Old Yoda grunted, ears waggling. "Go with the Force, then. To hear from you at first opportunity, we expect."

"Yes, Master."

Anakin bowed again when his teacher did, mimicking the young Knight's deliberate motion and then tailing him out the door, mindful not to tread on his cloak hem as he had on that one intensely mortifying occasion.

In the burnished lift, behind sealed doors, he released a pent breath. "Whew. I'm starving, Master. And where are we going again?"

Obi-Wan cocked a brow. "Were you not being mindful? Nowhere."

"I'm not a baby!" the frustrated padawan retorted. "You just said that 'cause it's a big chupa-booki secret. Where exactly are we going, really?"

But you could never get anywhere with Obi-Wan by pushing.

"To the refectory," came the blithe non-answer. "I thought you were starving."