What a mess, Carth thought as he took a look at the hyperdrive. The Ebon Hawk had just crash-landed on some Force-forsaken world, with the Star Forge lurking nearby and Bastila still in captivity. Just what we needed.

Shaking his head, he stepped out of the engine room and turned the corner, only to be hit by a human missile in the form of Karalina Jade. "What-"

"It's gone!" She said in a panic.

"What's gone?"

"My ten page paper! The computer ate it!" She waved her hands frantically to emphasize her point.

"Your- oh. It's you again." The infamous "end user." He briefly wondered if she was ever going to get around to telling him her name.

"Charming, Mr. Onasi. Just charming." She crossed her arms in front of her. "And I don't suppose you've ever had a computer eat your final paper."

"I haven't written a paper in years."

"There's your problem! You've no sympathy for the plight of the student any longer."

Carth sighed. "And what do you want me to do about it?"

"Help me look for it, of course. You're looking for stuff on this world anyway, so can't you come with me and help me look for my paper while you're at it?" She looked at him pleadingly. "It's my final paper, and I worked on it for weeks. Please?"

Dammit, he never could resist that look. "Oh... fine. Just so long as the mission stays on track."

"But of course. I wouldn't have it any other way. I just want to find my paper, and then I'll leave you alone."

"Well, if we're going to find it, we should head out." He checked the charges on his blasters, saw that they were still in good fighting order.

"All right, let's go."

Most of the day had passed by, and they had found the parts to fix the hyperdrive, as well as visited both of the Rakata camps, but the paper was nowhere to be found.

Karalina buried her head in her hands. "I'm doomed. I'm going to fail, and they're going to put me on academic probation."

"No you're not... I'm sure it will turn up somewhere. Or if worse comes to worse, you could always rewrite it."

Her eyes widened as if to say, are you insane? "Do you have any idea how much time that would take? I've already written it once, writing it again would be murderous."

He threw up his hands defensively. "Hey, I was just suggesting it. No need to burst into flame, there."

The look of utter despair on her face pulled at his heartstrings, but there was little he could do to remedy the situation. She plopped down on a nearby rock and reached over to pet a gizka who hopped by.

It looked delighted, and opened its mouth to coo-

-and that was not what came out.

"An engaging game makes the player care about her characters," croaked the gizka.

"What the-" Karalina almost fell off the rock in shock.

"I... didn't know gizka could talk."

"That's not just talking. That's my paper!"

"Gaut begins his article with explaining identification. Some say identification is being numerically identical to a character, which is impossible. Others argue that it is simply to say that one cares for a specific character..."

"Who's Gaut?" Carth asked.

"Some philosopher. And I can't believe you're asking about the text while a gizka is doing the talking!"

"I was curious! Even though the talking gizka is a little weird."

"Really? I hadn't noticed."

"...I can also imagine the property of not running into myself, which is not that difficult to imagine in this context..."

Karalina looked at the gizka pointedly. "You're cute, but you ate my paper. Give it back?"

The gizka looked at her sweetly. "... when the audience knows no more and no less than a character, it encourages us to identify much more closely with that specific character. Witness again the scene in Empire Strikes Back. The audience is just as shocked as Luke is..."

"I don't think he's listening to you. And what's this 'Empire Strikes Back'?"

"It's a film. That I was using as an example to explain the article."

"So Luke is a person in this film?"

"Yeah, he's a Jedi, at least in training. Nice guy, a little whiny. Too much time on Tatooine, I think."

"Wait- so there's a film about this galaxy?"

"Well, yeah, but you're way before Luke's time. Remember Kyle?"

"Oh... right. Much later."

"You got it."

Karalina looked forlornly at the gizka. "I don't suppose I could just take you to my professor, could I?"

"...This is also not very useful, just a nifty feature. Consequently, I would suggest that the point-of-view shot is far from being the heart of identification..."

"That's what I thought." She sighed. "Well, maybe I can hack the code later. For now, I need a break."

"Why don't we go back to the ship, get some food?"

Karalina closed her eyes and half-smiled. "Okay, food is good. Food helps me keep going. Exams are almost over, everything will be okay."

"Oh, come here." Carth reached over and gave her a hug. "Don't worry, I'm sure you'll be able to get your paper from the... gizka."

He released her, and she took a deep breath. After considering this for a moment, she said, "So that's how I had to get a hug out of you? Get my paper eaten by a gizka? That's a little counterintuitive. But thanks, I needed that."

"No problem. Now let's go get that food."

They walked away, and the gizka hopped behind them, delighting the pair with the deficiencies of the philsophers' veiws on identification in light of the development of role playing games. It tried to follow them aboard, but Mission quickly shooed it out.

And thus the poor gizka sat outside the Ebon Hawk, mournfully reciting the bibliography.