Six Years before "A New Hope"
A landspeeder roared to a stop as it completed its approach to the Lars' homestead.
This is the most annoyingly long day I think I've ever had, Luke thought. When is Uncle Owen going to give me a break?
These blasted vaporators, always breaking down on my days off. Normally, Luke would just shrug this off. Today things were annoying him extraneously for some reason. His energy was spent, knees and legs burning with pain from a long day's work. He stumbled out of his speeder clumsily and began to walk inside.
"WEEEP! DOODOPBEEP!" an impatient, offended electronic voice behind him wailed.
Oh, Luke thought idly, his mind and body simultaneously thirsting for rest. That thing.
His uncle, Owen Lars, had just purchased this droid two days ago and had ordered Luke to take it to the north ridge to see how well it performed today.
Luke failed to understand why Uncle Owen kept dealing with those slimeballs in the local shops. Ten years ago, Owen had bought the finest new set of moisture vaporators available from one of the more reputable and trustable dealers in Mos Eisely. Uncle Owen spent his life savings on these machines. The 'plan' after was to buy a decent set of used droids that could help maintain all of them. But it seemed that no one around here had any affordable droids available that were properly retrofitted to reliably stand up to the Tatooine sun.
We go through one of these droids a year. They're always breaking down. If only he'd listen to me just once and deal with the Jawas when they came around. I'll have to humor him for now. Better to not rouse his temper.
Uncle Owen had indeed been in a particularly foul mood lately, much more so than usual. Luke's little 'stunt' in Uncle Owen's T-16 five days ago in Beggar's Canyon had nearly cost him his life. The shields held up well when he wrecked it, but his failed turn through a tight loop sent the old Skyhopper off balance and careening into the canyon wall. Luke swore with dread as he saw Uncle Owen's speeder pull up that the old man was going to kill him. Uncle Owen didn't like seeing something he had owned (owned since he himself was a teenager) destroyed in what he had called a 'moment of complete, reckless stupidity'.
I did almost have that womprat, though. Luke smiled at the thought, the recollection of his uncle's wrath washing away with the expression on his face.
Luke carefully hoisted the oily, smelly, impatient astromech droid out of the speeder. The little nuisance had barely been any help at all in repairing the vaporator today. It showed its gratitude for being helped out of its backside position by spitting oil out of its dome, splattering Luke's already dirty garments. The oil was hot and immediately stung his stomach like a thousand needles when it hit him.
"Agh!" Luke screamed. "You know what, no oil bath for you!" he spat, pointing at the dirty old droid. It was already rolling away from him, ignoring what he had said.
Luke mused for a moment about taking the droid to Anchorhead to have its memory wiped, but then reconsidered...
..a worn out droid with its memory wiped would still act like a worn out droid.
Luke felt some pity for the poor thing as it hobbled along on a very bad motivator. His pity ended when it spun its dome and uttered a hiss of nasty sounding beeps and chirps, then continued to roll away from him. Anyone and everyone in the galaxy that had ever been around an astromech droid knew exactly what that series of beeps was -- a form of droid profanity.
"You know, I think Uncle Owen likes picking out droids that act just like him," Luke muttered quietly to himself.
He always gripes about me spending my credits on my speeder upgrades, about wasting credits playing games, or wasting time with my friends. But he should be one to preach -- he won't even buy a newer astromech droid, or even a protocol droid that can communicate with our vaporators worth a...
"Luke!" A female voice stammered from down below. "Dinner's been ready for over an hour! I've kept it warm for you!"
I'm late again. Great. He hadn't even noticed the time until Aunt Beru called out to him. The twin suns were beginning their descent into the horizon.
"All right, I'll be right down!" He called back promptly.
Aunt Beru was the only person whom Luke felt he could turn really look to when times were tough. Calm, and a polar opposite to his raving uncle, she was more like an affectionate friend. He confided in her many things he felt he wanted to do with his life. A passive and kind person, she was always willing to listen to anything he had to say.
Sometimes that was part of the problem, as she was not very proactive in their conversations during the few occasions they had quality time (away from daily chores, and out of earshot of Uncle Owen) to talk.
Uncle Owen was a different story. True, he loved his uncle as much as Beru. It was in Luke's nature. But, that didn't mean that he liked him most of the time.
Luke stood on the threshold of the top of the steps, about to head down for dinner. Wait. I need a minute tonight. Luke was already in for it, anyway. Might as well do it. Since he was already going to be in trouble, there would be no harm in doing one of the few things that gave him a lot of happiness.
He stood on the edge of the homestead as he had done many times since the oldest memory he could recall, watching the twin suns of Tatooine sink into the horizon. Luke didn't know what drew him here. Maybe it was just a place to relax and think for a quick moment. He only knew that this was his moment of calm, and that it gave him peace. It was in this moment he would look beyond his monotonous and bonded life here. He had so many dreams of something more for himself, some greater cause he wanted to commit himself to. He knew in his heart he would leave eventually, and never look back.
Never look back.
The wind seemed to almost whisper these words to him. It began to pick up and blow his hair all about his head, shifting the sands around. Gusting rapidly, it gained in speed. The distant upsurge of air in the horizon clouded the two setting suns from his vision.
A sandstorm is coming. At least I got a moment to myself before I had to go inside.
He looked back at the homestead for a moment expecting the usual from Uncle Owen. Just before he did, something caught his eye...
"LUKE!" An unfriendly, enraged voice bellowed from the main entrance hall. "Beru called you down here half an hour ago! Get down here and eat so I can shut the blasted power down!"
Poodoo.