DELUSIONS

Fett walked into Orba's audience chamber, pushing his merchandise to the floor in front of him.

"Fett, ma boogy." Boomed Orba. "Makey chisay! I chang giv yu fiy, unt thangmitalyo channki!"

"You promised me eighty thousand, Hutt." Growled Fett, not surprised that the Hutt was trying to weasel out of paying the full amount. Promising to pay almost double was like a ritual among Hutts. Fett did not observe that ritual.

"Fett, Fett. Thankimalchi gargo. Tookasa tamani togacha. Ma boogy chisay chisay?"

"Very well, you can keep your forty percent." At this remark Orba's face lit up into as close to a smile as it ever got. "And I'll just keep forty percent of him." Fett concluded, gesturing at the captive.

"No, no ma boogey. Ma chisay boogey! Tangar chanch garchi chag!" Orba started gesticulating wildly.

Seeing that he had won, as he always did, Fett nodded and turned. Checking his account as he went, the hunter returned to *Slave I*.

As soon as the hunter left, the tension started to seep out of the room. The band began to play again and Orba's latest prisoner was dragged off to the special area Orba kept just behind his audience chamber, a room devoted to torture and interrogation.

Many of the beings in the room stood listening to the beat of the jizz music being played, but for Orba, the true melody was the song of the screams that played in his chamber of private amusements behind him.

Seldom, he thought, are things useful for both business and pleasure.

Perhaps he would visit it tonight.

Vanner Antilles slumped in the harness that he was strapped into, trying desperatly to do...anything. Ever since he had been taken to this awful place by that bounty hunter…..how long had it been now? Days? Weeks? Months? Years? He didn't know. He couldn't think. He couldn't do anything. The world swirled past him in a mesmerizing wash of colour, dancing past his face, taunting him with its freedom. He wanted to reach out, touch it, become a part of it. He wanted to, desperatly. Why couldn't he? He couldn't remember. He couldn't remember anything.

Something wafted to him through the haze that surrounded him, a haze created out of exhaustion and hunger and overdoses of dozens of different drugs. Listening hard, forcing himself to concentrate, he thought he heard a noise. Vanner stared hard, trying to tell what he was seeing through the haze of colour. It looked like a big slug standing in front of him.

Suddenly he burst out laughing. Why was he laughing? What was so funny? He wasn't sure, but he was laughing all the same and it was a sensation that he enjoyed.

Then he remembered. He was laughing because he had thought, "there is a big slug standing in front of me." How could a slug stand? He started laughing again. No, he didn't. He had never stopped laughing.

Why was he laughing again? Oh, yes. The "Standing Slug". That sounded like a song.

Vanner started singing "The Standing Slug" over and over until he was forced out of his thoughts by the slug again. This time the noise was louder, more insistent, more annoying.

What did it want? It was asking him questions. Then answer them! Just make it go away. It was disturbing him.

Orba "stood" in front of the Imperial, his questions being run through his 3PO translator droid, the Imperial slurring out answers mindlessly. By the time the session was over, Orba felt that he knew plenty about the Imperial's latest creation.

A computer program, designed to be the ultimate seek-and-destroy weapon, gone horribly wrong.

With its continual attempts to create superior artificial intelligences the Empire was continually running into the problem that they had termed WiSE, or the Wildfire Sentience Error, an error that DarkFire had developed. Most errors of that nature were located and terminated before any problems could occur, but DarkFire had successfully managed to hide the error.

DarkFire. The name, for some reason, appealed to Orba.

What appealed to him the most, though, were DarkFire's abilities. The computer program could access communication ports and transfer itself, via com link-up, to any computer or droid it could reach over the link-up. Once in the computer, or droid, logic matrix, no matter how simple or complex, it gained complete control over the AI by imprinting its own patters onto the Vibro-brain. When DarkFire left the computer system it removed the command overlay, as well as leaving a falsified memory package.

In layman's terms, DarkFire could control any computer or droid anytime, anywhere; coming and going between terminals without leaving a trace.

The perfect assassin.

Orba licked his lips just thinking about it. If this tech was telling the truth; and he was in no shape to be lying, DarkFire would be a great new addition to the arsenal of mercenaries that he always kept within arms reach, which for a Hutt was never very far.

After becoming sentient, DarkFire had downloaded itself onto the Holonet; making tracking it virtually impossible, were it not for one fact.

Programmed as a seek-and-destroy program, DarkFire would still be obeying that programming, ever after achieving sentience. Therefore, all that was needed was an order to seek-and-destroy and DarkFire would be drawn out, ready to do Orba's bidding.

He hoped.

Just in case you haven't figured it out, Italics are marked with *'s