Han Solo was very cold. Very, very, very cold. In fact, so
cold that the woolen hat, earmuffs, and fluffy anorak that had mysteriously
appeared in his hands as he was walking along the crowded nighttime streets
of Mos Eisely didn't do much to warm him up. Corellians just weren't made
for the Tatooine climate. Hot in the daytime, almost hot enough to make
him want to take off his maroon angora sweater-not that he ever would. He
hadn't taken off the sweater since he was a baby, and he wasn't sure he
could stand living without it. And now this at night. He never could
stand deserts.
Han bumped into one of the passerby on the street-he couldn't see where he was going, as he was staring, enthralled, at a window display of fine imported jewelry. When he looked down again to see who he had hit, he noticed a nice gold pocket watch dangling from his stiff, frozen fingers.
Oh my, he thought, bewildered. A gold and ivory pocket watch. Now how ever could it have gotten there? I wonder who would have been kind enough to toss a cold, unemployed man an expensive watch on the street.
Attributing his find to a lucky turn of fate, Han dropped the watch into one of the anorak's fur-lined pockets and strolled off down the street.
"Hey! You there! Stop, thief!"
Han spun around. A tall, studly young man was charging down the street at top speed toward him, tossing pedestrians aside and leaving many young women's heads turned in his wake. Instincts told Han that now would be a good time to bolt. But how odd; he must have been mistaken for someone else. The thief certainly wouldn't apply to him.
He bolted. The man caught up with him anyway.
He stopped. The man stopped.
"Just what," the young man growled finally. "Do you think you are doing?"
"I have no idea what you're talking about," Han said evenly. He seemed to have this kind of conversation very frequently. "If you have spent too much time over your beers, please find one of your friends and take it out on him, not on innocent passerby. If you have a genuine issue with me, please lower your voice so we can discuss this without half the population of Mos Eisely watching us."
"Oh, half already is," the young man assured him gloomily. "The female half. I have that effect on females. But seriously," His voice sharpened. "give back my pocket watch. This instant."
"What?"
"Don't play games. You stole my pocket watch. That thing's been in the family for centuries, and you just stole it."
"Well, I wouldn't have it if you hadn't tossed it to me across the street," Han retorted.
The young man looked about to growl something decidedly unpleasant in return, but checked himself, paused, and nodded slowly.
"I see," he said sagely. "A kleptomaniac."
"-In a sweater." Han finished wearily. Why did everyone seem to leap to that conclusion? "That's what it says on my Wanted poster."
"Sweater?" The young man raised one dubious eyebrow. "When someone says 'kleptomaniac', 'sweater' isn't the first word that leaps into my head."
"Because of this." Han rolled up the sleeve of his anorak enough to expose the line of hideous maroon that was the cuff of his precious sweater, and let the statement hang.
"Well. I suppose we all have our quirks.Now be so kind as to give back the watch!"
Reluctantly Han pulled the watch out of his pocket and handed it to its previous owner.
"Now, I'm trying to decide whether or not to report it when a meet a Wanted, sweater-wearing kleptomaniac on the street-"
"Oh, Beatrice!" A shrill, singsong female voice grated across Han's ears. Around the corner of the nearest building stepped a young lady, blonde like the man in front of him, probably some sort of model. "The holofilm's about to start, Beatrice.
Han looked from the lady to the man and back. There was only one possible solution. The handsome, blonde, surfer-type man in front of him was called.Beatrice? (Of course, there is no such thing as surfing in that galaxy, unless you count Pakrian Mind Surfing, in which two old men with long beards sit across from each other and pretend that they are flying. The point of this game is to see which of the old men goes crazy first, and is therefore proclaimed the winner because he generally starts running around screaming and clubs the other old man, still in his meditative state, to death with a toilet seat or something similar. The point of this tangential venture is that Han Solo obviously did not liken the young man to a surfer, but in this galaxy he would have resembled the legendary California studs.) And his name was Beatrice.
"B-B-Beatrice?" Han sputtered, choking on the rude guffaw that was stubbornly attempting to spurt out of his mouth. "Your name is Beatrice?" Beatrice rolled his eyes. "Go on, laugh," he said with a martyred air. "It's not my fault that my name sounds like some old- fashioned schoolgirl's. My old dad was so excited when I was born that his glasses fell off, and he couldn't see that I was actually a boy. By the time they realized that I was not the dear little daughter they had been expecting, the name Beatrice had stuck. It was on my birth certificate, and nobody wanted to bother to change it."
Han snickered. Beatrice glared.
"Oh, Beatrice!" Another girl's voice this time, a deeper, huskier one. She was also a model type, with curly dark hair and a very long nose. "The holofilm's starting!"
"I'm coming!" Beatrice yelled, then turned quickly back to Han. "Okay, I have a couple of dates so I'm not going to report you to the planetary security. Nice to meet you. Evening, kleptomaniac."
Beatrice strolled off down the street.
Han plodded off in the other direction, hands buried in his pockets. Was he really a kleptomaniac? That would explain all the Wanted posters. How horrible! What an awful person he must be to know! A kleptomaniac.
He trudged aimlessly around and found himself a few hours later standing in front of a large, dark-painted building with a sign above the door reading: Dr. Namby Pamby, Psychiatrist.
Dr. Namby Pamby was used to wild-eyed people in odd clothing bursting into his office at all hours of the night, so when the door was knocked off its hinges by another specimen of desolate humanity he merely stood up, turned off his datapad, and beckoned the stranger inside.
"Hello, sir," he said pleasantly. "How can I help you tonight?"
"I think," the man said restlessly, "that I'm a kleptomaniac."
"And what makes you think that?" Dr. Pamby said, keeping his voice level and reassuring.
"There are signs up all over the city with my picture on them, and they say that I'm a kleptomaniac."
"And is everything that people say about you true?"
"Well." the man considered for a moment. "No. I guess not."
Han Solo turned and walked out, feeling much satisfied. Two weeks ago, Luke Skywalker had sworn that he would give up his drinking habits. He had driven his battered landspeeder out into the middle of the Tatooine desert, loaded with all his crates of undiluted lemon juice, and stopped over a canyon where no one could possibly find his load and reclaim it. Then, with great satisfaction, he had tipped all the lemon juice over the side of the landspeeder and watched it smash on the rocks far below. That had been the end of it. No longer would he be dependant on the little flask of lemon juice to give him enough spark to make it through the day.
Now he regretted it. Bitterly.
Dr. Namby Pamby was used to wild-eyed people in odd clothing bursting into his office at all hours of the night, so when the door was knocked off its hinges by another specimen of desolate humanity he merely stood up, turned off his data pad, and beckoned the stranger inside.
"Hello, sir," he said pleasantly. "How can I help you tonight?"
"Listen." The stranger cleared the room in a single stride and grabbed Dr. Pamby by his collar. Well-trained in human psychology, Dr. Pamby remained silent and unintimidated. "I need your help. I have a dependence. A major dependence, and it's causing me big problems."
"Ah. What is it? Alcohol? Drugs?" Dr. Pamby had dealt with this man's kind many times before. "I can help you."
To Dr. Pamby's surprise, the man shook his head.
"Worse than that," he whispered. "Much worse. It's.lemon juice. I can't stop drinking lemon juice. Dr. Pamby, normal people are dependent on alcohol and drugs. But there is nobody else out there in the galaxy who has a lemon juice problem. I need you to help me stop it."
"Well.er.I'd say.er." Dr. Pamby was stunned out of speech in spite of himself. "I'd say.get some exercise, some more excitement, something to take your mind off lemon juice. Go and take a trip somewhere.er.yeah."
It was not the best cure Dr. Pamby had ever prescribed, but it appeared to satisfy the man.
"Okay."
Luke Skywalker turned and walked out, feeling much satisfied.
Princess Leia, formally known in her home town of Grand Forks, North Dakota as Leah, the Local Beatles Freak, was a tougher cookie than she looked, despite her bellbottom jeans. Humming the tune of "Eleanor Rigby," she swiftly recovered from her ordeal with the canned beets, fashioned a lockpick from the volume control of her headphones, and escaped from her cell. She somehow found her way into Darth Vader's deluxe kitchen, where an unusual, ink-blotted little man behind the refrigerator showed her the best way out of the station. Hijacking a ship from under some officers' noses, she flew down to Tatooine, the nearest planet, and promptly decided that she was either dreaming or completely hallucinatory. When pinching herself, slapping herself, and throwing herself off a cliff, all to the tune of the Beatles' greatest hits, failed to produce any results, she decided to go see a psychiatrist.
Dr. Namby Pamby was used to wild-eyed people in odd clothing bursting into his office at all hours of the night, so when the door was knocked off its hinges by another specimen of desolate humanity he merely stood up, turned off his data pad, and beckoned the stranger inside.
"Hello, ma'am," he said pleasantly. "How can I help you tonight?"
A woman wearing the oddest clothing he had seen in his long life of counseling freaks crossed the room and flopped down on the heavily padded couch like she owned it.
"Hello," she said after a moment. "I'm crazy and you don't exist."
Psychiatrists did not have preconceptions, but Dr. Pamby had definitely not been expecting this.
"And what makes you say that?" Dr. Pamby fell back on the time- honored What-the-heck-is-going-on-with-you statement.
"Because ten years ago I was at a Beatles concert in Grand Forks, North Dakota, and now, ten years later, I'm sitting on a remote planet in a different Galaxy after escaping from a Sith Lord's big space station. Obviously, none of these things exist. People always said I'd go crazy if I kept listening to the Beatles, and now I've gone around the bend."
"Well, all I can say is, I certainly exist, because-"
At that moment, a large warp appeared in space-time, and a large man with a handlebar moustache and a French accent drifted across the ceiling and cried, "I think, therefore I am," before vanishing on the other side of the room.
"He said it," Dr. Pamby said triumphantly. "I think, therefore I am."
"I still think I'm nuts, and that you are imaginary."
"Well, everyone is entitled to their opinions."
"I guess so. And you know, going nuts isn't so bad."
Princess Leia, or Leah the Local Beatles Freak, turned and walked out the door, feeling much satisfied.
That was how the three of them wound up together, in the same building, just in time for Beatrice to be calling for some heroes to save the galaxy. What a lucky chance they all happened to be crazy.
Far above, in the darkness of space, the little man behind the refrigerator reached the 27 billionth digit of Pi.
Han bumped into one of the passerby on the street-he couldn't see where he was going, as he was staring, enthralled, at a window display of fine imported jewelry. When he looked down again to see who he had hit, he noticed a nice gold pocket watch dangling from his stiff, frozen fingers.
Oh my, he thought, bewildered. A gold and ivory pocket watch. Now how ever could it have gotten there? I wonder who would have been kind enough to toss a cold, unemployed man an expensive watch on the street.
Attributing his find to a lucky turn of fate, Han dropped the watch into one of the anorak's fur-lined pockets and strolled off down the street.
"Hey! You there! Stop, thief!"
Han spun around. A tall, studly young man was charging down the street at top speed toward him, tossing pedestrians aside and leaving many young women's heads turned in his wake. Instincts told Han that now would be a good time to bolt. But how odd; he must have been mistaken for someone else. The thief certainly wouldn't apply to him.
He bolted. The man caught up with him anyway.
He stopped. The man stopped.
"Just what," the young man growled finally. "Do you think you are doing?"
"I have no idea what you're talking about," Han said evenly. He seemed to have this kind of conversation very frequently. "If you have spent too much time over your beers, please find one of your friends and take it out on him, not on innocent passerby. If you have a genuine issue with me, please lower your voice so we can discuss this without half the population of Mos Eisely watching us."
"Oh, half already is," the young man assured him gloomily. "The female half. I have that effect on females. But seriously," His voice sharpened. "give back my pocket watch. This instant."
"What?"
"Don't play games. You stole my pocket watch. That thing's been in the family for centuries, and you just stole it."
"Well, I wouldn't have it if you hadn't tossed it to me across the street," Han retorted.
The young man looked about to growl something decidedly unpleasant in return, but checked himself, paused, and nodded slowly.
"I see," he said sagely. "A kleptomaniac."
"-In a sweater." Han finished wearily. Why did everyone seem to leap to that conclusion? "That's what it says on my Wanted poster."
"Sweater?" The young man raised one dubious eyebrow. "When someone says 'kleptomaniac', 'sweater' isn't the first word that leaps into my head."
"Because of this." Han rolled up the sleeve of his anorak enough to expose the line of hideous maroon that was the cuff of his precious sweater, and let the statement hang.
"Well. I suppose we all have our quirks.Now be so kind as to give back the watch!"
Reluctantly Han pulled the watch out of his pocket and handed it to its previous owner.
"Now, I'm trying to decide whether or not to report it when a meet a Wanted, sweater-wearing kleptomaniac on the street-"
"Oh, Beatrice!" A shrill, singsong female voice grated across Han's ears. Around the corner of the nearest building stepped a young lady, blonde like the man in front of him, probably some sort of model. "The holofilm's about to start, Beatrice.
Han looked from the lady to the man and back. There was only one possible solution. The handsome, blonde, surfer-type man in front of him was called.Beatrice? (Of course, there is no such thing as surfing in that galaxy, unless you count Pakrian Mind Surfing, in which two old men with long beards sit across from each other and pretend that they are flying. The point of this game is to see which of the old men goes crazy first, and is therefore proclaimed the winner because he generally starts running around screaming and clubs the other old man, still in his meditative state, to death with a toilet seat or something similar. The point of this tangential venture is that Han Solo obviously did not liken the young man to a surfer, but in this galaxy he would have resembled the legendary California studs.) And his name was Beatrice.
"B-B-Beatrice?" Han sputtered, choking on the rude guffaw that was stubbornly attempting to spurt out of his mouth. "Your name is Beatrice?" Beatrice rolled his eyes. "Go on, laugh," he said with a martyred air. "It's not my fault that my name sounds like some old- fashioned schoolgirl's. My old dad was so excited when I was born that his glasses fell off, and he couldn't see that I was actually a boy. By the time they realized that I was not the dear little daughter they had been expecting, the name Beatrice had stuck. It was on my birth certificate, and nobody wanted to bother to change it."
Han snickered. Beatrice glared.
"Oh, Beatrice!" Another girl's voice this time, a deeper, huskier one. She was also a model type, with curly dark hair and a very long nose. "The holofilm's starting!"
"I'm coming!" Beatrice yelled, then turned quickly back to Han. "Okay, I have a couple of dates so I'm not going to report you to the planetary security. Nice to meet you. Evening, kleptomaniac."
Beatrice strolled off down the street.
Han plodded off in the other direction, hands buried in his pockets. Was he really a kleptomaniac? That would explain all the Wanted posters. How horrible! What an awful person he must be to know! A kleptomaniac.
He trudged aimlessly around and found himself a few hours later standing in front of a large, dark-painted building with a sign above the door reading: Dr. Namby Pamby, Psychiatrist.
Dr. Namby Pamby was used to wild-eyed people in odd clothing bursting into his office at all hours of the night, so when the door was knocked off its hinges by another specimen of desolate humanity he merely stood up, turned off his datapad, and beckoned the stranger inside.
"Hello, sir," he said pleasantly. "How can I help you tonight?"
"I think," the man said restlessly, "that I'm a kleptomaniac."
"And what makes you think that?" Dr. Pamby said, keeping his voice level and reassuring.
"There are signs up all over the city with my picture on them, and they say that I'm a kleptomaniac."
"And is everything that people say about you true?"
"Well." the man considered for a moment. "No. I guess not."
Han Solo turned and walked out, feeling much satisfied. Two weeks ago, Luke Skywalker had sworn that he would give up his drinking habits. He had driven his battered landspeeder out into the middle of the Tatooine desert, loaded with all his crates of undiluted lemon juice, and stopped over a canyon where no one could possibly find his load and reclaim it. Then, with great satisfaction, he had tipped all the lemon juice over the side of the landspeeder and watched it smash on the rocks far below. That had been the end of it. No longer would he be dependant on the little flask of lemon juice to give him enough spark to make it through the day.
Now he regretted it. Bitterly.
Dr. Namby Pamby was used to wild-eyed people in odd clothing bursting into his office at all hours of the night, so when the door was knocked off its hinges by another specimen of desolate humanity he merely stood up, turned off his data pad, and beckoned the stranger inside.
"Hello, sir," he said pleasantly. "How can I help you tonight?"
"Listen." The stranger cleared the room in a single stride and grabbed Dr. Pamby by his collar. Well-trained in human psychology, Dr. Pamby remained silent and unintimidated. "I need your help. I have a dependence. A major dependence, and it's causing me big problems."
"Ah. What is it? Alcohol? Drugs?" Dr. Pamby had dealt with this man's kind many times before. "I can help you."
To Dr. Pamby's surprise, the man shook his head.
"Worse than that," he whispered. "Much worse. It's.lemon juice. I can't stop drinking lemon juice. Dr. Pamby, normal people are dependent on alcohol and drugs. But there is nobody else out there in the galaxy who has a lemon juice problem. I need you to help me stop it."
"Well.er.I'd say.er." Dr. Pamby was stunned out of speech in spite of himself. "I'd say.get some exercise, some more excitement, something to take your mind off lemon juice. Go and take a trip somewhere.er.yeah."
It was not the best cure Dr. Pamby had ever prescribed, but it appeared to satisfy the man.
"Okay."
Luke Skywalker turned and walked out, feeling much satisfied.
Princess Leia, formally known in her home town of Grand Forks, North Dakota as Leah, the Local Beatles Freak, was a tougher cookie than she looked, despite her bellbottom jeans. Humming the tune of "Eleanor Rigby," she swiftly recovered from her ordeal with the canned beets, fashioned a lockpick from the volume control of her headphones, and escaped from her cell. She somehow found her way into Darth Vader's deluxe kitchen, where an unusual, ink-blotted little man behind the refrigerator showed her the best way out of the station. Hijacking a ship from under some officers' noses, she flew down to Tatooine, the nearest planet, and promptly decided that she was either dreaming or completely hallucinatory. When pinching herself, slapping herself, and throwing herself off a cliff, all to the tune of the Beatles' greatest hits, failed to produce any results, she decided to go see a psychiatrist.
Dr. Namby Pamby was used to wild-eyed people in odd clothing bursting into his office at all hours of the night, so when the door was knocked off its hinges by another specimen of desolate humanity he merely stood up, turned off his data pad, and beckoned the stranger inside.
"Hello, ma'am," he said pleasantly. "How can I help you tonight?"
A woman wearing the oddest clothing he had seen in his long life of counseling freaks crossed the room and flopped down on the heavily padded couch like she owned it.
"Hello," she said after a moment. "I'm crazy and you don't exist."
Psychiatrists did not have preconceptions, but Dr. Pamby had definitely not been expecting this.
"And what makes you say that?" Dr. Pamby fell back on the time- honored What-the-heck-is-going-on-with-you statement.
"Because ten years ago I was at a Beatles concert in Grand Forks, North Dakota, and now, ten years later, I'm sitting on a remote planet in a different Galaxy after escaping from a Sith Lord's big space station. Obviously, none of these things exist. People always said I'd go crazy if I kept listening to the Beatles, and now I've gone around the bend."
"Well, all I can say is, I certainly exist, because-"
At that moment, a large warp appeared in space-time, and a large man with a handlebar moustache and a French accent drifted across the ceiling and cried, "I think, therefore I am," before vanishing on the other side of the room.
"He said it," Dr. Pamby said triumphantly. "I think, therefore I am."
"I still think I'm nuts, and that you are imaginary."
"Well, everyone is entitled to their opinions."
"I guess so. And you know, going nuts isn't so bad."
Princess Leia, or Leah the Local Beatles Freak, turned and walked out the door, feeling much satisfied.
That was how the three of them wound up together, in the same building, just in time for Beatrice to be calling for some heroes to save the galaxy. What a lucky chance they all happened to be crazy.
Far above, in the darkness of space, the little man behind the refrigerator reached the 27 billionth digit of Pi.
