Entry Fifteen – Days after Geonosis, One Hundred Six
Loathe as I am to admit it, the drug dealers have solved the medical supply problem, at least for the moment. The compounds they synthesize, medicines I told them to produce, are less effective than industry standards and have a distressing tendency to induce headaches and abdominal pain, but they do work. Rates of illness have risen, but they remain well below critical levels. Projections indicate we can last for at least a year before the risk grows unmanageable. One way or another the Hutts will have to make a decision by then, it is against their nature to avoid weighing in and picking a side. I suspect they are simply waiting for additional evidence as to which side is likely to emerge victorious.
I hope we can forge an alliance soon. As awful as it feels to depend on an agreement with an organization representing some of the galaxy's worst practices, the Republic needs access to the hyperspace routes they control, and we need the material resources of Hutt Space too. Perhaps some great feat of daring by one of the Jedi will prove to the Hutts that our prospects are better than those of the Separatists.
There was a riot today on Level 1319, and the cause is directly traceable to supply shortages. A suite of construction droids began the demolition of a ruined warehouse complex slated for conversion into a munitions plant a full ten days early. Their optical gyros weren't replaced on schedule, which caused a calibration error of their internal clocks during an update. There were still thousands of people living in the area, and they expressed their opposition to the development violently. Opportunists joined in after that, inevitably, and by the time the police were able to restore order half the sector had risen in discontent.
Intellectually I understand that redevelopment projects are necessary to support the war effort. Droids will never buckle due to morale failure, so victory is only possible through winning the war of attrition. I even recognize the economic arguments that projects of this nature will greatly benefit the local residents. At the same time, this incident is deeply troubling. A huge portion of the Bucket's residential population consists, as a technical matter, of squatters. This is principally a consequence of mismanagement and corruption, many of the unofficial residential blocks are quite sophisticated and fully hooked into the local utility grid. The syndicates also have vast influence over these unprotected persons and their agitators no doubt contributed to the violence. Moving people out of their homes, regardless of their rights to possess them, is bound to be difficult and painful.
To their credit I believe the Underworld Police fully understand this. They have made great efforts so far to conduct civil relocations and find shelter for those who homes are slated to disappear into the maws of construction droids. Officers have even transported a number of persons, all members of rare species, to my clinic upon finding signs of serious illness. I strongly suspect that Prefect Xeril and his fellow high-ranking officers were trying very hard to avoid precisely this sort of mass resistance. Eventually I suspect some sort of protest would have occurred no matter their efforts, but to have such a thing happen because of improperly maintained droids is frightening. It reveals the shocking limits to our control of their vast synthetic space.
Billions live in the Bucket, and hundreds of billions more fill the other inhabited blocks as one rises upwards toward Galactic City. Every one of them, of us, depends upon continual labor by an equally large number of droids. If those machines break down I suspect Coruscant would collapse within days.
We must either break through the Separatist blockade or secure an alliance with the Hutts soon. This was the first riot, but surely it will not be the last. The military and the High Council must know this. No doubt the Hutts have incentives to hold out, every day that passes only increases their leverage, but the Separatists must be competing for their favor as well.
If the Hutts join with the CIS is victory even possible?
I was always taught, and have always believed, that a Jedi Knight with the Force as her ally could overcome any obstacle. I still believe that, but I now understand that the vast scale of the galaxy constrains even the Force. Military types like Major Kayi speak of 'force multipliers,' ways to make a single soldier count as many. Surely the Force is the greatest of such factors, but I begin to think that no matter how great the multiplication, the number at the base is too small. Ten thousand knights is not enough to save the galaxy and preserve the peace, not on their own. Hopefully the clones will make up the difference. It is difficult to imagine where matters would stand without them.
The archives are clear on one point: the Jedi Order was once far larger than its current numbers, a statistic that even a brief walk through the cavernously empty halls of the temple makes clear. Why have we become so few? I suppose it is a pointless thing for me to worry about. Whatever the reason, I shall never be in a place to change it, and such hypotheticals are a distraction from the task at hand. I must concentrate on the problems I can solve, those of health. More workers means more droid supervision and maintenance, fewer errors.
Notes
A very recent TCW episode established that Spice can serve as the raw material for both narcotics and medicine (not surprising, the same thing is true in the real world), which serves as a nice bit of confirmation for this particular reference.
There's an interesting question with regards to how many droids there are compared to organic sapients in the Star Wars galaxy. It certainly seems like there should be more droids than organics, and on highly developed planets like Coruscant the ratio might be ten to one or even higher. The amount of effort necessary to maintain these units must be immense, and it seems likely that even small supply chain failures could have drastic consequences.
With regard to the declining size of the Jedi Order, this is something that is quite clearly happening in the Prequel Era. Mace Windu specifically says 'Jedi we have left' immediately prior to Geonosis, which implies that there has been a significant decline over time. Ten thousand knights and masters is a shockingly tiny number in a galaxy-sized polity like the Republic, and there's evidence that at its height the Order may well have numbered in the millions. It seems likely that the decline was gradual (though the as-yet unwritten Project Luminous might change that), which is why Nema cannot point to any specific cause.