Chapter 3: The Villain's Backstory

About four months after Nan arrived on the Despair, Grievous came into her cabin with a pile of papers and waved them in her face.

"Don't you ever check your mail?" He asked.

"It's super boring," said Nan, "plus everything important arrives by email."

She looked guiltily at her computer, which said that her inbox had 656 new messages that she also had not checked.

"If you had any sense of duty," said Grievous, "you would have checked your mail and discovered that Count Dooku and Clare Myoollen are coming tomorrow and they want to hear a progress report from you. From what I've seen, unlike me, you have been playing games, messing around, and completely neglecting your original job."

"I thought nobody really cared what I do here."

"I thought so too but Count Dooku has a new secretary and she has been doing an amazing job at organizing his schedule. She's aware of all his commitments, including you. So, do you have anything to report to the Count tomorrow?"

"I've got squat."

"Good luck then."

Nan pulled an all-nighter that an undergrad who hasn't studied for the midterm would be proud of. She was not completely without ideas. Ever since the battle where Grievous had saved her, she'd been pondering the Jedi and their use of the Force and the idea for a machine that blocks this ability was spinning around her mind. That night, she put it all together, proving once again that she really was a genius. She had a prototype by 5 AM and was ready with a presentation at 6. Grievous wanted to gloat over what a good night's sleep he'd gotten so he only woke up at 7, but he woke up with a horrifying thought.

Nan had no concept of respect for authority. She was going to mouth off to Dooku and get herself killed. She wouldn't bow, wouldn't kneel, and wouldn't grovel. She didn't have an obsequious bone in her body. Grievous found her having a cup of coffee in the cafeteria.

"You look like shit even after a good night's sleep," she said, trying to spoil his gloat before it came, but he didn't have time for that anymore.

He explained to Nan that she should be on her best behavior when talking to Count Dooku and insisted that she pretend he was the Count and practice proper conversation.

"Greetings, Dr. Specious. Are we justified in paying your salary? Tell me, what do you have to show for all the time you've spent aboard this ship?"

"This," said Nan, and showed him a picture of a butt on her computer screen. She laughed so hard that she sprayed coffee on the screen.

"Nan, this is serious. Dooku is not like me. He won't tolerate your idiocy and jokes. You need to just swallow your pride and be polite. Now try again. Tell me about your progress, Dr. Specious."

"My progress has been significant, your excellency."

"Tone down the sarcasm, you clueless vermin!"

But it was time to go. Nan had already had droids take her prototype to a conference room. She walked to it with the General. Grievous suddenly noticed that she was still wearing her lab coat. It had never been washed, he knew this for a fact.[1] It looked like it smelled and did, noticeably, when you got close to it.

"Don't you have anything to wear besides that washing-up rag?"

"I suppose…but there's no time to get it."

"I'll get it. Just wait here. We have five minutes."

He scuttled off using all six of his limbs after Nan told him where she kept her jacket. Nan yawned and wondered if Grievous would not approve of her Acknowledgements slide. It was too late to change it. He came back, suddenly crawling out of the ventilation system. Dooku and Clare had been in the way so he had resorted to stealth, something he was not used to.

"Is this awful sack your jacket?" He asked.

"Ah yes, I took that from the little fellow who worked on breeding poisonous fish and died in his room from unknown reasons…"

Nan put on her jacket. It was maroon with black polka dots. Grievous pulled some hanging clumps of fur off it, but that did not much improve its appearance. Nan walked into the conference room with the General close behind. She went up to the podium, radiating confidence. Certainly, if this had been her Second Year Defense as part of a Ph.D. track, she would have aced it.

Dooku and Clare came in. Clare looked uncomfortable around the Count. She feared the worst. Somehow or other, if Nan messed up, this would redound on Clare, who had no idea what Nan had been working on for the last few months because Nan didn't answer her email.

"Greetings, Dr. Specious. Are we justified in paying your salary? Tell me, what do you have to show for all the time you've spent aboard this ship?" Asked the Count.

It was almost as if Grievous had read his mind.

Nan looked mischievously at the General in the back and reached for her computer. He felt scared, not just for Nan but for himself. If she whipped out that butt drawing it was all over. She would die because of her own stupidity. Ah, but he would… What would he do?

Instead Nan opened up her presentation and started describing her device in a pleasant, professional manner, referring to Count Dooku as "sir" or "my lord" when appropriate without a hint of sarcasm. Dooku was intrigued and even a tad delighted at this invention. Clare asked technical questions that Nan fielded expertly. Dooku wanted a demonstration on himself. He noticed the General in the back.

"Grievous, why are you lurking here? Don't you have something to do? All of this is too complicated for you to understand. Go and have the droids check the ventilation system. When we were coming here we heard something thrashing about in it, maybe a damaged probe."

So much for the General's first attempt at stealth. He slunk out of the room, giving Nan an icy glare. She terminated her presentation without getting to the Acknowledgements slide and proceeded to start up the device. It was bulky and slow but she knew it would work. It could only neutralize one Force-wielder's ability at a time but that was still useful. The range was ten meters so Count Dooku stayed where he was. Grievous watched them from the security center.

"The machine is up and running. Can you use the Force, my lord?" Asked Nan.

Without waiting for an answer, she grabbed a chalkboard eraser from a box of odds and ends and chucked it at him. It hit him on the head and created a cloud of dust. Dooku coughed and waved the dust away. In the security center, Grievous nearly crushed one of his hands with the other. Clare squeaked and floated behind a chair.

"The chalkboard eraser test is positive," said Nan as if she had not done anything out of the ordinary. "The machine is working at full capacity. I think it can be taken out into the field after I play with the proportions a little. What do you think, Clare?"

She looked at Clare and the Count expectantly. The chalk cloud settled. Dooku wasn't sure what to make of this.

"Was it really necessary to throw an eraser at me?" He asked.

"Standard protocol," said Nan seriously, with a nod.

Clare haltingly agreed that the machine worked well after the Count tried to lift some chairs with the Force and failed. Nan promised to have the machine ready for action in a few weeks. She could have optimized it in a few hours, but she didn't feel like working any harder than she had to. Grievous came back in. Dooku glared at him for apparently forgetting his previous instruction to leave, then filled him in on the success of Nan's machine.

"This should give you an edge over Kenobi," he said.

Grievous agreed that this was good and edged over toward Nan's computer while the scientist talked to Clare. He had noticed that her slides were still open, though not on the projector screen. The last slide was visible. It said, "Acknowledgements: thanks for listening, bitches." He slammed the lid shut just as Dooku turned to look his way.

After that nerve-wracking day, Grievous felt rather spent. He didn't want to study anything new, but Nan was psyched about her success and wanted to teach him physics. She raced ahead of him to the classroom while he trailed behind, muttering, "Why do I care? Why?"

Nan started to prattle on about force, not the Force, but F = ma. Grievous could not concentrate and finally Nan noticed.

"What's up? I did what you asked, more or less. I pretended I was a famous actress. You should be throwing roses at my feet."

"Like you threw that chalkboard eraser?"

"It worked out fine."

"But it so easily could have gone wrong. What is your problem, Nan? Why aren't you afraid of the consequences of angering a man like Dooku? Why aren't you afraid of anything?"

"It would take a while to tell. I'd have to start at the beginning."

Grievous, the General of the Confederacy of Independent States and commander of millions of droids, said, "So tell me, I have time."

"It would make no sense to explain my first impressions upon entering this world, because nothing made sense to me back then. Let me instead start by explaining about the Vindolians. A long time ago, they were typical forest dwellers who lived in trees and gathered bananas. They were peaceful but quite territorial and they were constantly fighting against the people of the plains, who wanted to burn the forests to make more lands for crops. For a while the ecosystem was in equilibrium, but then the plains people started getting military and technological help from outsiders and the Vindolians fell far behind. The forests cried and burned. The Vindolians grew vengeful. They retreated to the great trees in the heartland of the mighty ancient forests, where they developed science that the universe had never seen before.

"They wanted to build an army that would rival clones, droids, and regular soldiers. All three have disadvantages. Droids, as you know all too well, are stupid and require a lot of metal to create, which the Vindolians did not have in excess. Clones are also costly to produce and require intense training. What the Vindolians wanted was a type of soldier that did not need a lot of money to be produced and had instinctual survival skills. They wanted to use animals.

"I am not sure how best to continue my tale, but perhaps I shall introduce myself as I was then. I was a wild thing, an animal. I lived in the trees with my four children, my mate, and a community of relatives. My memory is spotty with regards to that life, for an animal does not remember things the same way as an intelligent creature. A lot more of experience is based on smell, for one thing. Perhaps that's why I never wash my lab coat.

"A group of us were foraging for beetles when the Vindolians captured us in nets and took us to their lab. My little children cried for me and I fought like a devil, but I was soon tranquilized. I woke up to a world of pain. I was in a gel tank but instead of healing me, it was hurting me. My head burned. There was a wound in my skull that I wanted to scratch but I was immobilized. I went in and out of the tank many times and now they did not give me the mercy of tranquilization. The brain does not have pain receptors, supposedly, but what they did to it would have caused a regular person to pass away from the stress, I'm sure. I, however, was an animal and the instinct to live was strong in me. They cut a window in my skull and poked around in my brain every few days, sticking things in it and sewing parts together. They monitored my reactions by poking certain regions of my brain with an electrified stick to see if my paw would twitch or my pupils dilate. It was torture but since I had no word for it, I suffered and endured. I had no hope and I could not rail against fate or curse my gods; I had no concept of such things. I did not raise my fist in the air and scream, 'Why?' An animal does not ask, it accepts. I had only the will to live. I whined and cried, not for help but just for myself.

"Day after day, my awareness of the world changed. They started teaching me language and subjecting me to various intelligence tests. I ran mazes, sorted colored blocks, picked doors that led to food, and other such tests. Some tests were reward-based and some were punishment-based. They had modified my limbs and I was urged to walk on my hind legs. I learned to read and write. I did not understand anything at all, though I learned my lessons well. They did not explain the world to me or talk to me like a person so I was left in a state of fragmented misunderstanding. I was often panicked and anxious. Things I had never felt before surged through me and I thought it was a sign of sickness. I started to ask, once I had the words, the obvious questions. Why was I there? What did these people want with me? Who was I?

"The original goal of the project was to create soldiers, but the Vindolians wanted to see just how much they could amplify the mental capabilities of a non-intelligent animal first. That was why they dug around in my head for so long instead of leaving me a simple slave capable of following orders. The tests got more complicated. Kind of like our lessons, I was taught math and science. Before I even knew my name or what planet I was on, I learned about derivatives and forces. Some of the scientists played mean pranks on me because I believed everything and did not understand about lies. They showed me a mirror one time and told me there was another of my species in it and I should run to her. I knew about the laws of reflection by then, but I did not make the connection between some formulas and the real thing and smashed into the mirror. They had me eat all kinds of junk, from pen ink to gravel, until I did not trust my food dish. One time they released a mouse in my cage and I promptly killed it, by instinct. 'Cannibal,' they cried. 'Murderer!' More words that I could define but did not understand.

"Meanwhile, the plains people had not been idle. They had spies and learned that the Vindolians were planning something and decided to attack and wipe them out. The Vindolians learned of this too late. By then they had some star ships but not enough to save them, and they were not skilled pilots. Those that escaped in the ships were shot down and the rest massacred in their tree villages. The scientists tried to save their lab equipment, including me, but the plains people attacked and they were forced to abandon the lab. The researcher carrying me in a case was shot dead and dropped me in the mud. The plains people did not realize there was something living among this mess and didn't find me. My cage broke open and I cowered, watching the Vindolian's ship fly away. By luck the scientists were the only ones of their people to escape.

"After the plains people wrecked the lab and left, I crept out. I had no idea what to do with myself. I spent many days wandering around, on four legs or two, not knowing what I was or what life was for or why it should matter. It had never mattered when I was an animal. I tried to go back to my kind but they did not accept me. They did not harm me like they could have but most, including my former mate, ignored me and some swept dirt at me with their hind legs. Among the many surgeries I had was a hysterectomy and they didn't know what to make of me. I smelled wrong, I wasn't really a female, but I was still sort of one of them. They let me forage with them a few times but I left of my own volition.

"I went back to the lab and hunted through the wreckage. I found books and notes that had been used to teach me as well as some novels. The scientists had managed to save all their secret info. I started reading the novels and lost myself in a world that finally started to make sense. I read about marvelous adventures, kings and queens, magic, and unlikely heroes. All that good stuff. I began to think of myself as a heroine and wanted to find a star ship and go off on quests. Fine, fine. Perhaps I should have left sooner, but I wanted to finish all the books.

"One day I went to explore the facilities in the back. There was a room I could not open that emanated coolness and I wondered if it was a big refrigerator with yummy food inside. After much humidity, the machinery keeping the door locked broke and I got inside. It was a refrigerator, but it did not store food. I looked in various bins and found tissue samples, cell cultures, and animal specimens. I checked every container, being a thorough sort, until I came to a box with large parcels wrapped in plastic. There were four. I took them out and a familiar smell wafted up toward me. I unwrapped my dead children. During all that time, I had not thought of them much. My new powers of perception were still poorly calibrated for prediction and guesswork so I had not assumed they experienced the same fate as mine. Animals forget. The mother will stand over her fallen young for a while, then forget and breed anew.

"I was not an animal anymore and the discovery of my dead children affected my newly formed brain irrevocably. I nosed their poor heads, still showing that same gaping skull wound I had once possessed. They had not survived the experiment. I screamed and that scream has been echoing in my mind ever since. They say true sound never dies. The sound wave just keeps propagating in endlessly bigger circles. That scream is still out there, far, far away, but it encircles me to this day.

"The rest of my story can be summarized briefly. I was broken and traumatized. I felt that the stories I had read were lies and the world nothing but a hateful trap. Everything was there just to cause pain. Consciousness was pain. I wanted nothing but revenge. It was long in coming. Like an idiot, I wandered into the nearest town where I was immediately enslaved and put to work. I groaned and suffered next to the old plains people, who had been taken over by some bigger and meaner creatures. My mind was officially made up during those years of slave labor. The world is shit and I would be done with it as soon as I got my revenge on those bastards that murdered my children.

"I got my chance to escape one day and snuck away on a merchant's vessel. After living hand to mouth on various planets, I learned of a test that was being conducted on Taia. They were starting up a research facility and were recruiting anybody, regardless of educational background, as long as they passed the test. I robbed a drunk and got a ride to Taia, where I passed the test by a wide margin and was hired.

"The place was always called S3F, though originally the moniker stood for Secret and Special Sciences Facility. I was not surprised to learn it was no normal institution. Half of the research projects were about torture and new ways to murder. I managed to impress early on and convinced my superiors that we needed to find the Vindolian people and extract their secrets. My project was funded and I sent out my agents. The Vindolians, the twenty scientists that escaped from the plains people, had migrated to some craphole in the Outer Rim but they did not keep their existence secret. I tricked them into coming to Taia by pretending to give them an invitation to do research. Instead they were captured and thrown in prison cells.

"I enjoyed the weeks I spent torturing my torturers. I let them know who I was, of course, otherwise it wouldn't have been fun. They cried and begged but nothing could stop me. I was exacting my revenge for being brought into this thrice-accursed world and having to partake in its misery. I got their scientific secrets out of them, including the procedure for the brain surgery that created me, but that was not my real goal. One by one they fell, some by their own hand. I laughed at their weakness. I left the scientist that had done the surgeries for last. Her name was Tam Ra. She was quite frail from starvation. I didn't care about the answer by then, I knew the answer, but I asked her why she did this to me and killed my children. 'To save my people,' she said. That's always the answer, isn't it? 'I'm going to drill a hole in your head and stick a few objects in it. Perhaps that will turn you into an animal,' I said. But she died before I could try. I took her name for the hell of it.

"Then followed many years of lackluster research and boredom. I never did get around to killing myself and started binge-eating for lack of anything better to do. This story answers your question. Why am I not afraid of anything? Why, I have been through it all and survived, for better or for worse. I have been tortured and enslaved. I have lost everything and gained nothing. I have murdered out of revenge. Am I still an animal? Oh no, I became something far, far worse."

The General regarded Nan without saying anything for a while. He sat with folded hands, quiet and introspective. Nan shrugged and started erasing the board. The minutes went by. Then…

"Vindolia is not the name of the planet you are from, isn't it?" Asked Grievous.

"Vindolia was the forest people's name for the forest. The plains people called their land Isstar, and that is the universally accepted name for it."

"It was my people that kept you enslaved, Nan. I was there."

"You? They looked nothing like you. I thought your mother was a vacuum cleaner and your father a catalytic converter."

"Don't be silly now, Nan. You know I didn't always look this way. I…I could have…"

"What, saved me from hard labor? Don't be stupid. You would have whipped me like the others. You would have trodden all over me if I dared speak up. I see now how you have so much experience at being a groveling sycophant. You've heard it all before."

"Still, I'm sorry for what my people did to you."

"Water under the bridge. Everything is water under the bridge."

The General felt that he should go. He got up and slowly put away his notebook, which had F = ma written in it like a promise. Nan rolled her eyes for no apparent reason. What had she expected? She was not asking for sympathy. Her story was a warning, though she had not thought of it like that. What happens after revenge is satisfied? Nan fingered the vial of NaCN that she always carried in her pocket. That's what happens, ladies and gentlemen, that's what happens. It was not too late for Grievous, with his ridiculous vendetta against the Jedi.

Grievous turned and said, "I'm also sorry about your children."

"Stop being so polite. You'll ruin your reputation."

"I'm also sorry about the scientists cutting up your brain. I have some experience with horrible surgeries but I daresay yours was worse."

"Oh, honestly! Stop apologizing for everything that happened to me!"

"But overall, I'm not sorry that you spent ten years moping around and setting up garbage experiments that failed because otherwise, you wouldn't have ended up here."

"On the Despair," said Nan.

"Yes, in despair on the Despair. But perhaps not anymore?" Asked Grievous.

"I think you're giving yourself too much credit. If you think that just because you give me a ride on your foot every now and then and teach me to fight I have suddenly abandoned my entire nihilistic life philosophy…"

"We'll see, my friend."

"Friend, oh, that's rich. You and your people would have flayed me for a pair of mittens and now we're friends? What the hell are friends anyway, I'm an evil villain, I don't know. But all right, friends."

A few days later, Grievous found Nan trying to sort through her mail. There was a long letter from the late Dr. Palvov, but Nan didn't think a boring person deserved attention just because he was dead and threw it in the trash pile with credit card offers and free magazines. She found a bunch of forms that she should have filled our regarding the change in her work department, followed by copies of the same forms for every two weeks she had not filled them out. Because she had never signed something important, the military somehow got the impression that she had deserted, even though Count Dooku saw and heard from her. There was actually a warrant out for her arrest. Nan called some droids to get her a shuttle to the military department headquarters immediately. Grievous followed, very much amused. Even his word was not enough to convince various state officials that Nan had actually been there the whole time.

Nan stood in the hangar with her forms while the droids got a shuttle ready and softly banged her head against a fuel tank. She was going to be at the headquarters for hours!

"Fuck me!" She said.

Grievous couldn't let such an opportunity go and said, "Wouldn't if I could."

Footnote

[1] One time they went exploring the nether regions of the Despair. They found a large, very warm room with a number of machines whose purpose puzzled Nan. "Just what are they?" She wanted to know. "Are they vertical centrifuges of some sort?" "Are you shitting me?" Asked Grievous. But she was not. She had never seen a washing machine before.